Lefevere unhappy with UCI's plan to restructure WorldTour

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At the finish of Dwars door Vlaanderen, Omega Pharma-Quick Step manager Patrick Lefevere was not happy about the recently announced WorldTour restructuring to be done by the UCI. He said he did not like it that teams would be shrunk from the current 30 riders each to 22 riders each.

"I'm not very enthusiastic. I preferred the situation like in the Mapei-days, when we had about 40 riders," said Lefevre to Cyclingnews at the team bus in Waregem, Belgium. "Then we were able to bring in young riders like Fabian Cancellara and [Filippo] Pozzato and work with them with our usual staff."

"Now I'll have to negotiate deals with young riders but tell them they will be riding in my B-team. They say they'll allow transfers from B to A, but I'll have to see that. I can understand that they split calendars."

When asked if it was still possible to negotiate the reforms, Lefevere laughed. "You know how they work at the UCI. They supposedly talk with everybody, but at the meetings there's six people from the UCI, two from the teams - if they're present - and two from the organizers which is ASO. They're OK with it as they have 63 GrandTour race days," Lefevere said.

The Belgian doesn't believe that the team representatives would support his view on things. "The teams are represented by Luuc Eisinga, who raised himself up as president, manoeuvring through everything, and by Alfonso [Galilea] from Movistar. If you know the culture at Movistar, then you know it's the first time they have a rider who's riding a one-day Classics over here," Lefevere said.