All 18 men's UCI WorldTour teams will miss the team time trial at the road world championships in October as a remonstrative move against the UCI, the Association International des Groupes Cyclistes Professionels (AIGCP) announced in a Facebook statement yesterday.
The decision was adopted at a meeting of the AIGCP general assembly on July 1st 2016 and was ratified this week as the "UCI failed against to address the demands of WorldTour teams," it said.
The AIGCP argues the UCI WorldTour team licensee regulations should only compel teams' participation in events granted a WorldTour license and not the UCI Road World Championships. Teams always receive an allowance when participating at these licensed events but at the World Championships foot the bill themselves.
The AIGCP labeled the UCI's refusal to abolish this practice as abusive and its passing of "exceptional legislation which soley favours the one road competition it owns and commercially exploits" as an abuse of its power.
The statement in full:
AIGCP informs that an overwhelming majority of its WorldTour members voted to skip the 2016 Team-Time-Trial World Championships in light of UCI’s unwillingness to offer fair and consistent terms of participation. This position was adopted at the July 1st AIGCP General Assembly and was ratified earlier this week after UCI failed again to address the demands of WorldTeams which are compelled under UCI regulations to participate in UCI’s TTT World Championships at their expense.
This situation is highly irregular in the context of professional road cycling,
- insofar as the WorldTour licence should only compel the teams that are granted one to take part in the events which are granted a WorldTour licence by an independent Licence Commission;
- and even when required to take part in a WorldTour event, WorldTeams are always granted a participation allowance to cover some of their costs;
- insofar as it evidences the fact that the governing body has passed exceptional legislation which solely favors the one road competition it owns and commercially exploits.
The abovementioned terms of participation which exist nowhere else in the sport are undeniably abusive and reveal the abuse of power which UCI incurs in when it enforces them solely for the one road competition it operates. All WorldTeams are expected to skip the TTT World Championships until these abusive practices are abolished.
