Brent Copeland, the Jayco-AlUla team manager, has been elected as the new president of the influential AIGCP, International Association of Professional Cycling Teams, replacing Richard Plugge of Visma-Lease a Bike after an extraordinary general assembly and vote in Milan last Friday.
Plugge was elected president of the AIGCP in 2021 and recently worked hard to create the independent SafeR race safety organisation but a number of teams called for him to quit last summer.
It later emerged that Plugge was the driving force of the One Cycling project that is trying to shake up the sport with backing from private equity. Some teams saw this as a conflict with defending the wider interests of all the AIGCP teams.
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Plugge opted not to stand for re-election on Friday when it emerged that he had little support from the teams. Cyclingnews understands that 13 initial candidates stood for the role of president before Copeland was elected.
Copeland raced in Europe and his native South Africa before becoming a directeur sportif for Lampre and managed different teams in the last 20 years, including MTN-Qhubeka, Lampre-Merida, Bahrain-Merida.
He also spent time working in management in the motorbike Moto GP circuit before returning to cycling in 2020 to manage the Jayco-AlUla team, owned by Australian businessman Gerry Ryan.
The AIGCP is one of the key so-called stakeholders in cycling, alongside the UCI, the CPA riders’ association and the AIOCC race organisers association. They control, manage and sit on the UCI’s Professional Cycling Council, which sets the rules and governance for the sport of professional cycling. The AIGCP also agrees on general contract terms with the riders and the CPA.
A new AIGCP Management Committee was also elected, with Emily Brammeier of Team dsm-firmenich PostNL elected as Vice-President. Also part of the Management Committee in different roles are Arkéa-B&B Hotels team manager Emmanuel Hubert, Cofidis team manager Cédric Vasseur, Kjell Carlström of Israel-Premier Tech, Juan Pablo Molinero of Movistar and Inigo Landa of UAE Team Emirates.
The new Management Committee indicates a move away from the dominance of the major WorldTour teams, who seem more focused on the One Cycling project and generating new revenue to cover their significant team budgets. However, details of the One Cycling project and any backers have still to be confirmed.
The AIGCP elections have now been confirmed under French law because the AIGCP is registered in France and Copeland’s election was confirmed via social media.
“We firmly believe that we have formed a very proactive and positive new working group who will represent all the UCI WorldTeams and the UCI ProTeams to the best of our ability and in doing so we look to align ourselves well with the sports’ stakeholders to create a productive and effective working environment for all,” the AIGCP said via a letter sent out to other stakeholders in the sport on Wednesday and obtained by Cyclingnews.
“Thank you for the trust that you have put in us. We look forward to working together to find our common ground, to create a better and more solid future of cycling for all.”
