The ProTour issue through Unipublic's eyes

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Victor Cordero(Image credit: AFP)

An interview with Victor Cordero, March 14, 2007

"Unibet is not in our plans, but fortunately, as we are not forced by the rules to give the wildcards on March 1 like last year, we can wait up to three months, until the end of May, begin of June [before we decide]. The last word it is not yet said," noted Cordero. "If Unibet has all its legal problems solved, if it improves the performances and conditions of the other six candidates…it is not Unibet alone, we have six candidatures for riding the Vuelta a España. We will make the decision mainly based on sporting criteria. Up to today, I don't see Unibet in the Vuelta."

"We want to give solely two because we want to start the race with 21 teams," he revealed. "Logically, I know that we will have pressure for having 22 teams: helping another one of the seven candidates. The decision will be based in two items: sporting results and the way things are done. It should be seen that it is a team [the chosen] that goes with a clear concept in cycling and with future plans. Besides, we will bring among the invited [teams] the ones that can guarantee good shows."

Cordero believes the situation that arose with Unibet was inevitable, given that the UCI granted it a ProTour licence after the Grand Tour organisers had declared it would only invite the 18 squads that met the governing body's original deadline for licence applications. The Spaniard also questioned how much consideration was given to the legal issues presented by an online gambling sponsor such as Unibet.

"We were very close to [a complete fraction from the UCI]," warned Cordero. "I think the first one who realised that, and assumed his responsibility to avoid it, has been the UCI president Mr McQuaid. As long as McQuaid keeps on being open to discussion and assumes his regulator role, because the UCI had lost its regulator role as it was part [of the conflict], a division will be every day further away."

"No, I am convinced that it is not useful. The ProTour idea, the best teams in the best races and also the best riders in the best teams, is an idea we can all share. What is the problem? That the idea dies there," stated Cordero. "It doesn't maintain the concept of the pyramid cycling had. Cycling starts down in the lower categories and goes up in a pyramid where the best team in the world and the best race in the world will be at the summit. There it is: the Tour de France."

"The ProTour changed cycling from the pyramid figure to a high tree with a leafy and beautiful crown where they are the best," explained Cordero. "But in this tree, the crown is every time further in the ground and the roots are smaller. As far as I'm concerned, representing Spain and as president of the world organizers association, I am able to say that there are races with a very long tradition that are dying. In the professional category, the number of teams has decreased and so did the number of races."

"I give you one name of a Spanish race that is Setmana Catalana. This race has, among its winners not once but many times, riders like Eddie Merckx or Luis Ocaña just to name two," he noted. "It is a long tradition race: a race that had UCI's maximum qualification among its category in many years. That race has died, and has died for two main reasons. First, it fights for the same place that Volta a Catalunya [has in the ProTour]. When Setmana Catalana organisers go to the authorities, they say to him 'No, you are second division'. When the organizer goes to Television Española, the TVE answer is the same 'Look, we will only broadcast first division races and you are not in the first division'."

"It is true that not all are flaws in the ProTour. There are important things that can be useful for the future too," he explained. "There is some stability in the teams, some professionalism in the whole system and there is a basic idea to reach, which is that the great champions retake the start of the season on March, April and end up the year on September, October: not to limit the calendar as it happened in the last few years to just one-month, July riders."

"The most positive thing from Monday's meeting was, apart from recovering the president of the UCI as regulator of the whole system, that is something fundamental, the commitment that in the discussing table we will all have a seat," explained Cordero. "Not only the great elite but also the other organizers and the other teams to make a project that can works in the medium term and put back cycling in the place where it is in Europe: cycling is number one sport after almighty soccer."

"We, the three organisations Giro, Tour and Vuelta, have posed that the Pro Tour must be fixed or recreated again [giving] consideration to sport in Europe. That includes promotions and relegations is", said Cordero. "In Europe sport is not a closed competition as the NBA is. Here it's vital that the one that does things well in a lower sporting category goes up the next year. And that the one that does things wrong goes down.

"I think we could establish a minimum two-year period to evaluate the results," he continued, giving soccer's Champions League and the UEFA Cup format as an example. "If, instead of 20 licenses - as UCI established - for four years all the licenses could be renewed considering the one with the worst results gets out and another one gets in, then we enter in a kind of circle that enables everyone to live."