Paris-Nice again a UCI event

The 2007 Paris-Nice stage race will finally be carried out under the authority of the UCI, not the French cycling federation FFC. Since the "last chance" meeting held on Monday in Brussels, the UCI has refrained from demanding sanctions against the FFC, who had intervened in the conflict between the UCI and Paris-Nice organiser ASO, offering to hold the event under its own rules and regulations.

But two days before the race prologue in Paris, the situation is back to normal as far as the race commissaires and anti-doping controls are concerned. "The FFC and ASO have decided to abandon the set-up of their convention for the organisation of the next edition of Paris-Nice, the conditions being now united to allow this event to take place under the support of the UCI," ASO published in a press communiqué on Friday.

Also, the French company announced that the UCI confirmed that the selection criteria for the ProTour did not apply to the events organised by ASO, RCS Sport or Unipublic. "The President of the UCI has notified Thursday 8th of March in the evening in a clear way [that the] World level events of ASO, RCS and of Unipublic, placed outside of the UCI ProTour calendar, were indeed no longer subject to the rules of selection and participation of teams as planned by the current UCI regulations (article 2.15.261- UCI pro Tour) for the 2007 season," the press release stated. "The FFC and ASO are delighted about the outcome of their joint processes with the UCI in this matter and are happy with the solutions that have been found in order to see Paris-Nice, one the major French cycling events, take place normally."