February 14, 2013 (Geneva) – The Professional Cycling Council (PCC) held its first meeting of the year yesterday and today in Geneva. As the new PCC President Joop Atsma (NED) – former member of the UCI Management Committee whose nomination was ratified at the beginning of the week – was unable to attend, his predecessor and PCC Honorary Member Vittorio Adorni (ITA) presided over the meeting
The PCC members were informed of the progress of the stakeholders’ consultation which was recently set up by the UCI. They were also kept up to date with the registration procedures of the UCI ProTeams, while a decision is still being awaited from the Court of Arbitration for Sport regarding the Team Katusha.
Two studies were submitted to the PCC during the meeting. The first, carried out by Ernst & Young, gave an overall picture of the economic evolution of professional teams. The second, from Lausanne University’s (UNIL) Institute of Sport Science, presented a model for the evaluation of the risk of doping within teams with regards to their structure.
The PCC learned of the decision by Global Cycling Promotion (GCP) to withdraw the Tour of Hangzhou from the 2013 calendar: after realising that the basic conditions for organising a race at UCI WorldTour level would not be met in the short term, the project has been frozen.
In order to ensure the consistency of the calendar, in particular taking into account sporting and logistical aspects, the PCC consequently agreed GCP’s request to bring forward the date of the 2013 Tour of Beijing to October 11-15.
Finally, the PCC approved a project aiming to increase the attraction of races which will be carried out in 2013 in collaboration with the organisers of two UCI WorldTour events: at these events, which will be selected in the next few days, each team will be able to have six starters only, and a new system of bonus points based on intermediate sprints will be set up.
The next PCC meeting will take place in Bergen (NOR) on June 12th and 13th.