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ASO pulls Tour de France, other races from WorldTour schedule

In a move that will throw consternation and confusion into the pro peloton, Amaury Sport Organization (ASO) announced Friday that it will withdraw its competitions from the WorldTour schedule as of 2017.

December 18, 2015
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In a move that will throw consternation and confusion into the pro peloton, Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), which owns and runs the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix, Vuelta a España and other cycling races, announced Friday that it will withdraw its competitions from the WorldTour schedule as of 2017. Instead of the WorldTour classification, the races will be HC or Hors Classe status, a lower category that currently includes the Arctic Tour of Norway, the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Paris-Tours.

This extraordinary step, part of ASO’s historical struggle with the UCI, is in response to a recent meeting in Barcelona in which cycling’s principles agreed to have races apply for a three-year inclusion in the WorldTour and for WorldTour squads to be given three-year licenses. The ASO, which had threatened in June to withdraw the Tour for the 2016 season, now has its say in which teams rides in its events.

In a statement, the ASO characterized the three-year license reforms as creating a “closed sport system” and said it “cannot compromise the values it represents: an open system giving first priority to the sporting criterion.”

Besides the Tour, Paris-Roubaix and the Vuelta, the ASO runs the stage races Paris-Nice and Critérium du Dauphiné and one day Classics Liège–Bastogne–Liège and La Flèche Wallonne.

Ten years ago, the ASO and UCI clashed over the old ProTour, with the ASO refusing to allow the Unibet squad to participate in its events, ensuring the team folded. After years of struggle, the Tour and Vuelta, along with the Giro d’Italia, were placed in a Historical Events calendar.

It’s difficult to say how the WorldTour teams affected will react. The new Velon organization, which includes 11 WorldTour teams and seeks to create a new economic future for the sport, tends to side with the UCI while the French teams tend to be in ASO’s corner. Giro organizer RCS Sport is caught in the middle. The authority of the UCI and the reforms it has introduced are threatened.

Some commenters looked at the bright side of holes appearing in the calendar.