UCI ProTour

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UCI ProTour
2008 UCI ProTour

Sport	Road bicycle racing
Founded	2005
No. of teams	20
Country(ies)	Europe
Most recent champion(s)	Cadel Evans Team CSC Spain

The UCI ProTour is a competition under the International Cycling Union (UCI). Created by Hein Verbruggen, former president of the UCI, it comprises a series of road bicycle races and a number of 'ProTour' cycling teams, each of whom are required to compete in every round of the competition. This system was created for 2005 and in many ways replaces the UCI Road World Cup series, which ended at the end of the 2004 season (although the World Cup did not include any stage races).

The ProTour includes the three Grand Tours, namely the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España. It also includes most of the former UCI Road World Cup races, such as Paris-Roubaix, Ronde van Vlaanderen and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. From 2008 the South Australian Tour Down Under will become the first ProTour to be held outside of Continental Europe and within the Southern Hemisphere.

1 Licensing
2 History
3 UCI versus Grand tour organisers
4 List of current UCI ProTour teams
5 List of former UCI ProTour teams
6 ProTour Results
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Licensing

The ProTour licences are given to 20 teams, to which sponsors must commit 4 years of sponsorship. The exception is the Phonak team, which was given only a two-year licence due to previous doping allegations.

After 2005, the Fassa Bortolo and Domina Vacanze teams folded and the vacant places were given to AG2R Prévoyance and Team Milram respectively. Following the 2006 season the designated principal sponsor for the Phonak Hearing Systems team, iShares, pulled its support as a results of the Floyd Landis doping scandal and the team was disbanded. The Unibet.com Cycling Team received Phonak's ProTour license, and the Swiss-based, Kazakh-backed Astana Team received the license previously owned by Manolo Saiz and his Liberty Seguros-Würth.

[edit] History

Season-long competitions for professional road racing were first instituted in 1948, and continued until the late 1980s when the UCI instituted the UCI Road World Cup series which ran until 2004.

In replacing the World Cup, the ProTour was designed to follow the format of the Formula One motor-racing series, and was intended to address several concerns:

The Grand Tours were not part of the UCI Road World Cup series
Different riders and different teams targeted different types of races, making direct comparisons during competition difficult
Team sponsorships tended to last only a very few years
Many teams had financial difficulty in paying their riders and staff members
Several teams had been plagued by doping issues

The UCI lobbied the organizers of the Grand Tours to participate in the ProTour, and was successful in obtaining their agreement despite prior disagreements and threats to completely pull out of the ProTour.

The ProTour has been criticized for not having a system in place for a timely upgrade and downgrade of teams from/to the lower-tier UCI Continental Circuits.

[edit] UCI versus Grand tour organisers

Originally, UCI and the organisers of the Grand Tour had been unable to come to terms on the 2006 UCI ProTour, with the result that the status of both the Grand Tours and some of the other races organised by the organisations behind the Grand Tours are unclear. A deal was finally reached on April 7. See the main article 2006 UCI ProTour for a list of races.

For the 2007 UCI ProTour season, the ASO, RCS and Unipublic, organisers of the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana respectively, remain at odds with each other. The primary reason is that grand tour organisers would like to have more freedom to invite popular national teams (e.g., UCI Professional Continental teams) and are attempting to exclude some UCI ProTour teams such as Unibet.com. The teams' organisation, the International Professional Cycling Teams (IPCT), has demanded a meeting between the UCI and the Grand Tour organisers to settle the dispute.

[edit] List of current UCI ProTour teams

Code	Official Team Name	Country	Website
ALM	Ag2r-La Mondiale (formerly AG2R Prévoyance (AGR))	France	ag2r-cyclisme.com
AST	Astana Team	Luxembourg	team-astana.eu
BTL	Bouygues Télécom	France	equipebouyguestelecom.fr
GCE	Caisse d'Epargne	Spain	cyclisme-caisse-epargne.fr
COF	Cofidis, Le Crédit par Téléphone	France	equipe-cofidis.com
C.A	Crédit Agricole	France	credit-agricole.fr
CSC	Team CSC	Denmark	team-csc.com
EUS	Euskaltel-Euskadi	Spain	fundacioneuskadi.com
FDJ	Française des Jeux	France	fdjeux.com
GST	Gerolsteiner	Germany	team-gerolsteiner.de
THR	High Road (formerly T-Mobile Team (TMO))	Germany	t-mobile-team.com
LAM	Lampre-Fondital	Italy	lampre-fondital.com
LIQ	Liquigas	Italy	teamliquigas.it
MRM	Team Milram	Germany	team-milram.de
QST	Quick Step (formerly Quick Step-Innergetic (QSI))	Belgium	qsi-cycling.com
RAB	Rabobank	Netherlands	rabobank.nl (Dutch)
SDV	Saunier Duval-Scott (formerly Saunier Duval-Prodir)	Spain	saunierduvalteam.com
SIL	Silence-Lotto (formerly Predictor-Lotto (PRL))	Belgium	silence-lotto.be

[edit] List of former UCI ProTour teams

Code	Official Team Name	Country	UCI ProTour Years
DSC	Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team	United States	2005-2007
FAS	Fassa Bortolo	Italy	2005
LST	Liberty Seguros-Würth	Spain	2005
PHO	Phonak Hearing Systems	Switzerland	2005-2006
UNI	Unibet.com Cycling Team	Sweden	2007

[edit] ProTour Results

Year	Top Ranked Individual	Top Ranked Team	Top Ranked Nation
2005	Danilo Di Luca Liquigas-Bianchi	Team CSC	Italy
2006	Alejandro Valverde Caisse d'Epargne-Illes Balears	Team CSC	Spain
2007	Cadel Evans Predictor-Lotto	Team CSC	Spain