Coulr O’Phobia, head of stuff at Aigle, revealed the extent of the UCI desire to help major players in the sport such as the organisers they can’t live without. “We examined this from a strictly objective point of view; 22 teams of 9 is approximately 198 riders. With the welcome addition of our friends from Katusha we have expanded the peloton by only 4.5%, I think, as 23 x 9 is 208 riders. This 4.5% can be recovered by our new program of innovative regulations – all groovy things we planned anyway.”

“We have relaxed the minimum weight of the bikes from 6.8kg to 6.494kg. We have also requested a reduction in wheelbase by 4.5% and all handlebars must now be a maximum of 38cm, which let’s face it, made Adam Hansen Grand Tour Omnium champion.

This now makes even more space on the road, but our help extends further. Riders will be expected to lose 4.5% body weight and to assist, we’ve decided not to ban Telmisartan, not that we were going to anyway – fill your boots team Doctors.”

Our president, Mr. McQuaid, has been moved by the words of outgoing Pope Henricous and we feel that extra riders is an exceptional opportunity to utterly reject homophobia and encourage riders to buddy up on accommodation – again easing the logistics nightmare we inadvertently created for the ASO and RCS. Cycling embraces embracing and should the Aussies see this as a step too far, we will accept top and tail arrangements.

Finally, whilst the regulations regarding sock height was welcomed by all our stake-holders, we will eliminate the extra 4.5% of laundry by asking all riders to wear one sock.”

How all cyclists look wearing only one sock

When pressed on the practicalities of such arrangements, outgoing president Pat McQuaid stated, “I feel that this increase in participation levels within the pro cycling ranks can be viewed as one of the wonderful legacies of my tenure. More cyclists on the roads can only be a good thing and the fact that we have done this via our usual incompetence shouldn’t dilute the benefits to sexual diversity and sales of Telmistartan.”

Katusha, whilst chuffed to be allowed back into the upper echelon of the echelons, were somewhat anxious regarding the new measures. Many of their press relations officers stated, “We are rather upset to be linked with a non-relaxation of the potential banning of a non-banned drug that lots of riders may have used legally. We love drug-free cycling at Katusha these days and would never not do none of that bad shit. Although the one sock rule is to be welcomed.”

Ripp and Jonny recap their top stories for 2012 and some of the highlights of the year – including compilations for the Top Five Moments in Suffering sponsored by The Sufferfest, Saddleblaze’s Eurorag Racing Roundup brought to you by sellmybikestuff.co.uk, and of course, the best moments from Undercover Gunn. BUT WAIT! What about bloopers? Yes! We’ve got guest bloopers, and we’ve also got bloopers from Ripp and Jonny. Enjoy the review!

Follow along with the crew on Twitter: @RippFinklemann, @theJonnyGunn, @CyclismasMercer, @saddleblaze. Follow show updates on Twitter @CCNN_TV.

Or take the show on the road with our iTunes downloads.

It's back to the future for Castorama

UCI president Pat McQuaid was flanked by Guy Colleau, Directeur General of Castorama, and Ettore Bandieri, Direttore Generale of Mercatone Uno, at the press conference.

Groceries, anyone?

“I’d like to welcome the applications of Castorama and Mercatone Uno in request of WorldTour status for 2012. We appreciate the previous contributions of both companies, and are thrilled with the fact that both have decided to return to the ranks of cycling,” declared McQuaid.

The news took many in the cycling community aback, especially after the acrimonious exit of both sponsors in the past, and the mercurial relationships both organizations had with the somewhat flamboyant personalities connected to previous incarnations of both teams. Castorama’s Colleau chose to confront any ancient history head on at the press conference.

“Considering the volatile nature and mercenary approach of cycling sponsorship, exemplified in the demise of the HTC, Radioshack, and Geox teams, we felt comfortable re-entering the cycling ranks, since a long-term sponsorship commitment doesn’t seem to be a requirement in cycling, unlike all other major sporting pursuits,” relayed Colleau.

“We’re happy with the fact that if it doesn’t work out after a year, even though we signed a 5-year commitment, the UCI will support our breach of contract if we so desire,” stated Colleau.

Bandieri, through an interpreter, conveyed the same feeling of comfort with “dipping his toe again in the cesspool that is professional cycling.”

Leading the new Castorama team, dubbed “Castorama 2.0,” is none other than former Tour de France champion and current Gran Fondo king Jan “Der Kaiser” Ullrich, who was unavailable for the press conference due to appearance commitments in the U.S.

Mercatone Uno has not settled on a manager, but will most likely choose several interim managers who will be changed sporadically throughout the season.

“A leopard can’t change his spots,” commented Bandieri, on the management-by-committee notion.

McQuaid was challenged by reporters throughout the press conference, especially considering the fact that both teams did not submit their paperwork in time for proper evaluation. This was according to emails earlier in the week from UCI spokesperson Enrico Carpani, when Carpani was asked about the rumours.

“Carpani never said that. That email must have been taken out of context. These teams have abided by the rules of the submittal process, in spite of the physical proof to the contrary,” summarized McQuaid.

The rosters of both teams will not be divulged until press conferences in early December.

In related news, SportAccord grand poobah Hein Verbruggen welcomed Mercatone Uno and Castorama to the sponsor fold for the Tour of Beijing. He also announced a Castorama joint venture with an unnamed Chinese firm to bring the home improvement warehouse concept to the people of China.

“China is the new frontier of unexplored economic opportunity. I am very pleased to open doors for deserving companies,” Verbruggen stated at the conclusion of the press conference.

WorldTour race organisers must contribute an amount equal to 15% of minimum prize money to the CADF as their contribution toward the cost of cycling’s anti-doping efforts. Every euro contributed by the race organisers towards the cost of anti-doping is a euro for which others sharing the cost of anti-doping don’t have to pick up the tab. Which leaves them free to spend that euro as they please. Every euro that the race organisers spend on anti-doping is also a euro which they cannot pay out to the teams. The race organisers’ CADF contributions should therefore be seen as an indirect form of revenue sharing.

With that thought in mind, let’s consider how much of the cost of anti-doping the race organisers currently share. As we saw last time out, minimum prize money for WorldTour events varies. For the five monuments – Milano-San Remo, Paris-Roubaix, the Ronde van Vlaanderen, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Giro di Lombardia – it’s €50,000 per race.

The other one-day races on the WorldTour calendar – Gent-Wevelgem, the Amstel Gold Race, the Flèche Wallonne, the Clásica San Sebastian, Vattenfall Cyclassics, GP Ouest France-Plouay, GP UCI  Cyclist Québec, and the GP UCI Cycliste Montreal – have minimum prize money of €40,000 each.

For the shorter stage races making up the WorldTour calendar – the Tour Down Under, Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico, the Vuelta al Pais Vasco, the Tour de Romandie, the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, the Critérium du Dauphiné, the Tour de Suisse, the Tour de Pologne, the Eneco Tour, and the Tour of Beijing – minimum prize money is set at €10,000 per stage plus half that again for GC, or €15,000 per racing day (e.g., a six-day WorldTour stage race has minimum prize money of €90,000).

For the Grand Tours, the minimum prize money is €850,000 each for the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España, and for the Tour de France it’s €1,000,000.

To turn those numbers into the organisers’ contribution to the CADF, multiply them by 15%. Doing that, we learn that the organisers of the Monuments each pay €7,500 to the CADF, the organisers of the other WorldTour one-day races €6,000 per race, and the organisers of WorldTour stage races pay €2,250 per racing day (e.g., €13,500 for a six-day stage race). The Giro and the Vuelta toss €127,500 each to into the pot, the Tour €150,000.

To complicate the matter somewhat, from last year, the GT organisers must also cover the cost of pre-race out-of-competition tests. The UCI’s 2010 accounts give a figure of 709,830 Swiss francs for that. Call that €190,000 per GT, bringing the Tour’s total CADF contribution up to €340,000

The sum of €340,000 from the Tour de France, it doesn’t look too bad, does it? Try this number then: €120,000. That’s the amount every ProTeam is required to contribute to the CADF. The Tour de France sits at the centre of the cycling world. For too many people, it is cycling. Yet the Tour de France coughs up less than the combined contribution of three ProTour teams to cover the cost of solving cycling’s doping problem? Think about that – Garmin-Cervélo, HTC-Highroad and BMC between them contribute more toward the cost of anti-doping than the Tour de France does.

ASO’s total CADF contribution

That, of course, is an unfair comparison. The teams are competing all year around and the Tour lasts just three weeks. Why then don’t we look at ASO’s total contribution to the CADF?

If we’re going to consider ASO’s total contribution to the cost of anti-doping, don’t you think it would be fair to consider the total contribution to the cost of anti-doping borne by teams? Consider Garmin-Cervélo. On top of the €120,000 levied upon them by the UCI, they fund their own independent anti-doping programme. The best estimate for the cost of that is about €375,000. Which brings their total anti-doping spend to just shy of half a million euros.

Thor Hushovd enters anti-doping control at the 2011 Tour de France (AFP PHOTO / PASCAL PAVANI )

Yup, that’s right folks: in total, ASO spend less on anti-doping than Garmin-Cervélo do. At some of their races, ASO are not even chipping in enough to pay for a single dope test. Seriously. The average cost of an anti-doping test is about €300. That’s not a very scientific figure, not all tests are the same and so not all tests cost the same but, as a simple average, it’ll do for our purposes here. €300. For just one test. Compare that with the €100 contributed toward to cost of anti-doping by the Critérium International. Or the €30 at the Ladies Tour of Qatar. Beyond the WorldTour races organised by ASO, the Amaurys really are getting a bargain when it comes to policing doping.

The World Tour’s CADF contribution

How does the half million or so euros spent by Garmin-Cervélo on anti-doping compare with the contribution of all the WorldTour races to cycling’s anti-doping costs?

Hands up, please, those impressed with those figures?

The big picture

Let’s move this up to the big picture. In 2010, the CADF raised 7.9 million Swiss francs from the teams, riders, organisers and the UCI. This compared with 8.2 million the year before. Let’s look at who contributed what:

The teams in total bear 59% of the cost of anti-doping, compared with the 21% borne by the race organisers. That seems unfair, but look at what the position was in 2009: the teams were shouldering 66% of the burden and the race organisers just 13%. Look closely at those figures though: the contribution made by the ProTour teams has actually risen, from 37% to 40%. The saving produced by making the Grand Tour organisers cover the cost of pre-race doping controls have been passed not to the ProTeams, who make up the majority of the Grand Tour peloton, but to the ProConti teams.

The shift in the burden of anti-doping costs between 2009 and 2010 might leave you thinking that we’ve reached a fair balance in the way the burden is borne, at least between the teams and the organisers in general (sharing the burden between the individual teams is a different debate). The race organisers have shouldered more of the burden, the teams have been freed of some of the burden. The teams are still required to spend nearly €3 for every €1 spent by the race organisers but compared with the €5 they had to spend in 2009, that’s an improvement. But are the race organisers now really bearing their fair share?

Go back to the table of ASO races. The Tour of Oman chips in just €210 toward anti-doping. The Critérium International just €100. Paris-Tours just €100. Once you step out of the twenty-seven WorldTour events, race organisers are contributing next to nothing to solving cycling’s doping problem. Think about this: twenty-seven races pick up the tab for more than 90% of the race organisers’ contribution to anti-doping. Three races – the Grand Tours – contribute more than two-thirds of the race organisers’ total share of anti-doping costs. ASO alone contribute nearly one third of the total contribution made by all race organisers.

Solve the manner in which cycling’s anti-doping costs are shared – between the teams and the organisers, among the teams themselves and also among the race organisers – and you will have gone some of the way toward solving the problem of revenue sharing.

Next: Sharing the revenue with the UCI.

Previous: Sharing the wealth at the WorldTour.

Tour of Qatar (photo: REUTERS/Fadi Al-Assaad)

Last time out we looked at the prize funds on offer at ASO’s races and discovered that only four ASO races – the Tour de France, the Tour of Oman, the Tour of Qatar and the Ladies Tour of Qatar – offer team prizes. Time now to turn to what is happening in the WorldTour as a whole.

The first thing you will notice in the above table is that it is incomplete. (So much for research, eh?) Of the 27 WorldTour races, I don’t have prize figures for 10 of them. Prize funds are not covered by the official secrets act. It should be easy to find out how much each race pays out. In fact, you would think most races would want to boast about their generosity, no? For a lot of races – particularly ASO’s – finding the information is easy, it’s just a click away on their websites. For other races though … oh dear.

For those races I couldn’t find the information I was looking for – either on the race’s website, or elsewhere on the net – I emailed the race organisers. Out of about a dozen-and-a-half emails I sent, only two race organisers could be bothered enough to reply. And one of them is still trying to find the information for me. (If any of you want to help fill in the blanks, you can find me on Twitter @fmk_RoI.)

So, my poor research skills aside, what is there to say of the races for which information is available? As per last time out, these figures are before considering participation allowances. If getting basic prize fund information isn’t easy, you can imagine the difficulty in getting participation allowances. The information I have though is that, the Grand Tours aside, only the Tour Down Under and the Tour of Beijing are paying more than the UCI-mandated €7,500 participation allowance (the actual amounts being paid by the Tour Down Under and the Tour of Beijing I don’t have, but it’s somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000 per team).

My real interest here is again in that portion of their prize funds race organisers set aside for teams. Of the above races for which I do have information, just five pay out team prizes: Tierreno-Adriatico (€11,000), the Giro (€118,340), the Tour (€201,000), the Eneco Tour (€1,000) and the Vuelta (€52,000). The Tour we’ve already covered, when looking at ASO’s races. The Giro and the Vuelta, you would expect them to pay team prizes. That Tierreno-Adriatico pays team prizes is not entirely unexpected, given its placement on the calendar. That the Eneco Tour is the only other race paying out a team prize is a surprise. (Again, it’s necessary to stress that there are ten WorldTour race organisers who couldn’t be bothered answering a simple question about how much they pay out in prizes. Some of them may, and probably do, pay team prizes.)

So let’s go back to the question I left hanging last time out: should ASO pay out more to the participating teams? The knee-jerk response is obviously yes. But let’s not be jerks. Rather, we should note that the Tour is already paying out considerably more than its nearest rival, and that ASO are, generally, more generous than most all of their rivals. Rather than demanding more from ASO, shouldn’t the AIGCP be doing more to level the playing field among all the race organisers, make the other races pay out more first?

But what if those other races can’t afford to pay out more? Anecdotal evidence tells us that the Tour de France makes a profit, as does Paris-Roubaix. The tours in Qatar and Oman have rich sugar-daddies. The profitability of the other races is open to question. My own opinion – and it is just that, an opinion – is that ASO is not a charity and would not be running races if there wasn’t a profit in it.

But what of others? Take the GP Ouest France-Plouay. Out of the generosity of their hearts, the good men and women in Aigle who ruin this sport kindly allocated €30,000 from the ProTour reserve to the GP Ouest France-Plouay in 2010, to help meet the increased costs of being on the WorldTour calendar (most of which costs go back into the pocket of the UCI – it’s just like giving aid to Africa, really). Making races pay their way is never easy, as all of us who have been involved in organising them at any level can attest. (It’s also worth recalling that the good men and women in Aigle have also generously used the ProTour reserve to sub Global Cycling Promotions €445,000 in 2010 and €177,000 in 2009. Given that GCP organises just one race, you might see that as a subvention to the Tour of Beijing.)

Does the failure to pay out team prizes mean that those races that don’t can’t afford the extra prize money? Possibly. But, as we saw last time out, even at ASO’s races there’s only four paying team prizes. So how about we consider the size of the overall prize fund and see what that tells us? The UCI sets a minimum prize money figure for different races, which covers stages and GC. Comparing how far ahead of the minimum different races are might offer some guidance as to how flush with cash they are.

Let’s do this in two stages, the first looking just at ASO races, the second looking at WorldTour races.

What’s interesting here is that there are only three races at which ASO pay the absolute minimum prize money: the Flèche Wallonne Femmes, Paris-Tours Espoirs, and the Critérium du Dauphiné. Of the last, it’s worth remembering that ASO only took over the race last year. So while they can afford to find extra money for riders at most all of their races, they can only afford to find money to reward the teams at four of them. If you were writing their end of term school report, you’d be inclined to put ‘could try harder’ at the bottom of it.

At the WorldTour races, the picture looks like this:

Of the WorldTour races for which I have information, you can see that 11 are paying above minimum prize money (and almost half of them are ASO events). But remember, just 5 of the above races (for which I have information) pay out team prizes.

There’s a point I’d like to introduce here, but for which I don’t have detailed information. Someone else will pick it up and run with it, perhaps. The point is this:  increasingly, race organisers are turning to cyclo-sportifs to help boost their bottom line. Consider the list of World Tour races above and the number of them that have associated cyclo-sportifs. Cyclo-sportifs which feed off pro races. It is easy for some race organisers to put on the poor mouth and argue that they are barely covering their costs in organising pro races. It’s even easier to use accouning sleights of hand to prove this should anyone ever look hard enough. But if race organisers are making money off the back of those races via a cyclo-sporif, then some of that money should, I think, feed back into the pro race. And from there back to the teams (and riders) who make that race popular.

Does any of this help answer the question as to whether the playing field among all the race organisers can be levelled, whether other race organisers should also be called upon to pay out more to the teams? Even without the cyclo-sportif point, I think it does, and that the answer is yes. If race organisers can afford to be generous to the riders, they can afford to be generous to the teams. Even if that means they have to be less generous to the riders. That’s just my opinion, and you’re welcome to disagree with it. And, by the end of the week and the conclusion of this series, I may be disagreeing with it myself.

Focusing the revenue-sharing debate on the richest race on the calendar is obviously the easy thing for the AIGCP to do; it is the story that will gain them the most publicity. But, if you were in ASO and the AIGCP were trying to embarrass you into giving them more crumbs from the table, don’t you think that you’d tell them to get other race organisers to improve their act first? Or maybe you’d want to tell them that, rather than using the media to demand meetings with Marie-Odile Amaury (bypassing the head of ASO, her son, Jean-Étienne Amaury, which is a bit like saying ‘I’ll tell your ma’ when the big boys won’t let you play with them) they should take their problem to the UCI and get them to set minimum prize money for teams and not just for riders?

Next: The CADF and the sharing of costs between teams and race organisers.

Previous: Revenue sharing at ASO races.

Blackwater troops being deployed in Aigle.

Citing the recent rash of internal UCI letters and memoranda reaching the general public, and the uprising of pockets of resistance to their globalization plans, president dictator Pat McQuaid reached out to the firm that provides security to many US-based assets, the group known as Blackwater.

“I am thrilled that Xe Services accepted our desires for tighter security measures to ensure our safety at the top of the cycling food chain,” praised McQuaid.

McQuaid continued to discuss the changes in the cycling climate, as the UCI business practices that have been entrenched for decades have recently come under fire, including alleged attempted coercion of cycling sponsors, and more recently this week charges from WADA at the Play the Game conference of an “inconsistent and flaccid doping programme.”

The UCI plans on deploying an armed security detail with every ProTeam at every WorldTour race in 2013, and a maintaining “strong presence” at the UCI Headquarters in Aigle. Plans have already been announced to install a concrete barrier around the cycling mecca, along with an inner security fence as a secondary precaution.

When asked about the dubious record of Blackwater Security, including alleged human rights offenses in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and the United States, McQuaid fired back with a sputtering soliloquy, highlighting the fact that these alleged offenses were the result of a “bleeding-heart left-wing media agenda against those who have earned business profits from their God given ventures determined by Divine Right to Rule.”

ProTeam managers who were asked to comment on the program refused to go on record, citing significant differences of opinion and a lack of intestinal fortitude to express their opposition to what many feel is a “hijacking of the sport at the expense of the masses,” a quotation that none of the team managers, owners or sponsors were willing to attribute themselves to whatsoever.

However, Gerard Vroomen, founder of Cervélo, was unafraid to mince words, “I’m still astounded that this supposed governing body, operating with a smaller revenue stream than ours [Cervélo’s], can sway the collective billion-dollar cycling industry to its will.”

In response to Vroomen’s comments, McQuaid concluded, “We’ll see how small our revenue stream will be in 10 years with the help of Xe Services, Itera, and others who have united to create a galactic cycling empire.”