 UCI
Cycling WorldCup was superseded by the UCI ProTour in 2005
Although each participating country have got it's own official tour
website but the official website for the UCI Pro Tour is :
www.uciprotour.com
The UCI World Cup was a season-long competition for European
professional racing cyclists, organised by the Union Cycliste
Internationale (UCI), the governing body of competitive cycling. First run
in 1989 (but the third in a series of similar initiatives dating back to
1948), the WorldCup was superseded by the UCI ProTour in 2005.
The UCI ProTour is a competition under the
International Cycling Union (UCI). Created by Hein Verbruggen, former
president of the UCI. It is comprised of a series of road bicycle races
and a number of 'ProTour' cycling teams, each of whom are required to
compete in every round of the competition. This system was created for
2005 and in many ways replaces the UCI World Cup series, which ended at
the end of the 2004 season. The ProTour includes the
three Grand Tours, namely the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a
España. It also includes most of the former UCI World Cup races, such as
Paris-Roubaix, Tour of Flanders and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
The ProTour licenses are given to 20 teams, which sponsors must commit to
4 years of sponsorship. The exception is the Phonak team, which is given
only a 2-year license due to previous doping allegations.
After 2005, Fassa Bortolo team folded and the vacant place was given to
AG2R Prévoyance. HISTORY
Season-long competitions for professional road racing
were first instituted in 1948, and continued until the late 1980s when the
UCI instituted the UCI World Cup series which ran until 2004.
In replacing the World Cup, the ProTour was designed to follow the format
of the Formula One motor-racing series, and was intended to address
several concerns:
-
The Grand Tours were not part of the UCI World Cup series
-
Different riders and different teams targeted different types of races,
making direct comparisons during competition difficult
-
Team sponsorships tended to last only a very few years
-
Many teams had financial difficulty in paying their riders and staff
members
Several teams had been plagued by doping issues
The UCI lobbied the organizers of the Grand Tours to participate in the
ProTour, and was successful in obtaining their agreement despite prior
disagreements and threats to completely pull out of the ProTour. The ProTour has been criticized for fear of not having a system in place
for a timely upgrade and downgrade of teams from/to the lower-tier UCI
Continental Circuits.
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