After days of negotiations and a meeting on Monday, that lasted into the late evening, the UCI ProTour and Grand Tour organizers have come to a partial agreement that will allow cycling to continue with its important races, even if the question of team selection has not yet been fully answered.
Paris-Nice, the first event entitled as a "ProTour" race, starts this Sunday, but three days after, running almost simultaneously, is the Tirreno-Adriatico. The Italian race, run by the same organizers as the Giro d'Italia, RCS Sport, still refuses to allow Unibet.com to race, after initially snubbing them in February during its wild card selections.
"We do not form part of the ProTour system," declared Angelo Zomegnan, events director of RCS Sport, after Monday's meeting to Rai Sport. RCS Sport owns Tirreno, Milano-Sanremo, Giro and Giro di Lombardia, and has taken a stance with its French counterpart, ASO, against the ProTour system.
"We have contacted the best 18 teams in the world [18 of 20 ProTour teams, lacking Unibet.com and Astana, but the latter is in on a wild card invite - ed.] but, in regards to the Grand Tours, we are able to invite another four teams via wild cards. For us the license system is dead," concluded the director from Lombardia, referring to the current upper-tier teams' rankings, ProTour.
Cyclingnews' recent coverage of the ProTour-Grand Tours split
