The news today is that the Astana team of Vino will not be given a spot on the ProTour. (news) So most likely the spot made available by Phonak leaving will be given to Belgium team sponsored by Unibet. Manolo Saiz still holds the Liberty Seguros team spot and no word about that. I am guessing that there will be one fewer ProTour team. That would be good as for the first time there will be more then 2 or so truly interesting non ProTour teams. With Astana, Team Barloworld, Tinkoff Credit Systems, the new team of Davide Boifava and wherever Ullrich might mind up. So if the current format continues we will be stuck seeing Euskaltel doing the northern spring classics, and some of the French and Italian teams in doing the Spanish stage races while some riders that want to be there are left out. The teams don’t really want to be there, and the race organizers would rather other local teams to be there.
The idea that the UCI had with the ProTour is that we would see the top riders doing more races, but the reality it hasn’t. As Delagado pointed out in the VeloNews interview last week that the top riders are doing far less races then what was done in the 80’s. All it has done is to make the ProTour teams send the “B team” to races they are not interested, rather then have a regional team that wants to be there. The UCI has to remember they can't mandate good races, but they sure seem to want to hurt established ones (Vuelta) to help newer ones (Tour of Germany).
ils seront là quand même pour les grands tours !
they will be there nevertheless for the large turns!
Posted by: scottforever | December 09, 2006 at 10:40 AM