A sport that cycling team manager Johann Bruyneel said is in “complete anarchy” may take a big step toward improving its public appeal Friday when Denver’s Jonathan Vaughters sits down with the once-feuding sides of international cycling.
Vaughters, director of Boulder-based Team Garmin-Slipstream, will sit down in Liege, Belgium, with Pat McQuaid, president of Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the governing body of international cycling, and Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour de France.
Their power struggle, which McQuaid said Saturday night was once “an all-out war,” led to threats of cyclist bans and accusations, making an already confusing sport even less organized.
In February, Vaughters was named president of the Associacion Internacional Groupe Cycliste Professionelle, the pro teams’ league. He is hoping to reinsert teams into the equation of decision-making and how the world rankings will work over the next five years. Currently, the way pro cycling operates is confusing, even to people in the sport.
“Do you know how teams are selected for the Tour de France?” Vaughters said. “I don’t. Do you understand, with all these anti-doping bodies, who is actually controlling and enforcing the rules? The Tour de France? UCI? WADA? Who is it?”
Vaughters doesn’t know what will come out of the meeting, but he knows the purpose. He hopes a more streamlined sport will make it more popular worldwide.
“How do you explain a sport that I myself might not understand?” Vaughters said. “Why does it matter? We have to make it more understandable for everybody. The NFL is easy. Teams play 16 games, you finish at the top of your division, you make the playoffs, you win, you go to the Super Bowl. There’s a simple format.
“Cycling hasn’t arrived to an understandable format, and that restricts the number of fans.”
The feud between the UCI and the Amaury Sports Organization (ASO), the company that owns the Tour de France, began five years ago. That’s when the UCI started the ProTour, a season-long points competition. The Tour de France, Vuelta a Espana and the Giro d’Italia would be the three highlights of the ProTour.
However, the three formed an alliance to stay off the ProTour calendar.
Two years ago, Prudhomme said the UCI should receive a “Golden Ostrich” award because it hasn’t done enough against doping. McQuaid demanded an apology at the 2007 Tour to which the ASO refused to invite him.
Last year, McQuaid threatened to ban any cyclists from the Olympics if they participated in the Paris-Nice race, which the ASO also runs. ASO countered by threatening to ban any riders from the Tour if they boycotted Paris-Nice. The boycott never materialized, but it underlined the growing inner turmoil of the sport.
Bruyneel, team director of Astana, one of the top teams in the world, told The Associated Press last year, “Everyone is always talking about the bad image of cycling with the doping scandals, and that is definitely true. But the other image we are giving to the outside world is that cycling is unable to solve (its) problems. I don’t know which is worse.”
In September, UCI and ASO signed an agreement in which the Tour de France is back within the grasp of the UCI. A new world calendar was created that includes the ProTour and the big tour races.
“There’s a relationship now,” McQuaid said from Casablanca, Morocco, where he’s attending the Tour of Morocco. “There’s a means of communication. I’d have to say the relationship between ASO and UCI is excellent.”
Still, Vaughters hopes getting his organization together with UCI and ASO will make pro cycling more understandable to the common fan.
“It’s a big weight on my shoulders,” Vaughters said. “At the end of the day, I feel it’s a useless position unless I’m able to do something. Certainly cycling is a sport where you can make a difference because it’s suffered the last couple of years.
“If I can get the dial moved a little bit, I’ll be happy.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
