Cycling News announces the Grand Tour organizers have split from the Pro Tour. This cannot end well for road racers in contention.
"The organisers announced that they are also withdrawing the eight other races organised by them, namely Paris Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico, Milan-San Remo, Paris-Roubaix, Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Paris-Tours and the Tour of Lombardy".
The Grand Tour organizes the best races, all those have wonderful traditions. The "luster" is thus removed from the Pro Tour- making it all but obsolete.
Why remove the Grand Tour from the Pro Tour?
"the GT organisers stated that the UCI ProTour series was "not credible on a sports level, because all the 2005 ProTour events - be it one-day or three-week races - are awarded the same number of points.” The statement siad that it was also "unjust, because the teams like Comunidad Valenciana, who won the Vuelta [teams classification - ed.], or Panaria who won Tirreno Adriatico, were deprived of their points because they had no ProTour licence."
While I did not root for the eventual winner of last years Pro Tour title, in the beginning of the season it did make all the spring classics a lot more relevant to one another.
Pro cycling is not in a good position right now and the organizers are not helping themselves with all this infighting.
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