UCI head Lappartient hopes to move Giro d’Italia and Tour of California apart on calendar

The 2020 season of the men’s WorldTour will see changes in the calendar, with the 20-25 race UCI Classics Series dominating proceedings January to April and August to September. But UCI president David Lappartient wants to eliminate clashes between the stage races that will have dominion over the summer months. One way to do this is separating the Tour of California and the Giro d’Italia in May.

While attending the UCI Bike City Forum in Milan last week, Lappartient shared a lot about cycling’s future with La Gazzetta dello Sport. He said, “We are working to avoid overlapping between Giro d’Italia and Tour of California. We already met RCS and we will speak with Americans in December. The idea is to postpone Giro of a week and push California one week earlier. Riders will be able to race them both.” The 2020 Tour of California would take place May 3-9, while the 2020 Giro would start a week later and be held between May 16-June 7. Next year the three week Giro starts on May 11 and the week-long Tour of California begins on May 12.

There’s no indication how a later Giro might affect the Grand Départ of the Tour de France.

There has been a call for the painkiller Tramadol to be banned by the UCI, and Lappartient revealed that testing for substance will begin in March of 2019 in time for Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico. “We won’t apply the WADA anti-doping rules, it won’t be an anti-doping test, we’ll use our health rules,” he explained. “The test only needs the taking of a drop of blood from a finger. It will be done before or after a race. Whoever is over the threshold will be excluded from the race or disqualified from the results if the test is done afterwards.”

Other news from the interview was that Rwanda is in pole position to host the 2015 Road World Championships, with Morocco also up for consideration. The Tour of Rwanda just became a 2.1-rated race after nine years at 2.2 and attracted its first WorldTour team in Astana. It has a reputation for being very well supported by Rwanda crowds.

Having long expressed his desire to rid the pro peloton of power meters and ear pieces, Lappartient said, “This (banning power meters) will be examined with a new work group that will get a setup soon. There will be also non-cycling people: journalists, technicians, physiology experts, TV producers. Our job is to have ideas to make this sport more attractive.”