Tuesday 6 January 2009

Phone lines are now open for your calls.


Marks out of 10 please judges.

There is a rumor that there is set to be a major change in the way teams and riders are eliminated from major races and that these changes will be outlined by Uncle Pat when he announces the 2009 World Calendar this coming Thursday.

At the end of 2008 the UCI needed to regain credibility (titter ye not) with fans, teams, sponsors, jurnos, and race organisers. So they scrapped the 'Pro-Tour' and came up with the 'UCI Pro-Tour'. Now everybody is happy, the UCI rule the cycling world again, ASO, RCS and Unipublic have all bowed down before the golden throne and all cyclings problems are at a stroke, solved.
But the UCI ever keen to keep up with the times and in an effort to attract more armchair cycling fans have hit on a novel way of promoting the sport. Starting with the Tour Downunder riders will be eliminated from stage races not just for missing the time cut, crashing or failing dope tests, but also as a result of public phone vote.

Your call only costs 2 Euros a minute.

At the end of each stage a panel of experts will select 10 candidates, who will be scored on their contribution to the race, their riding style and their ability to execute certain predetermined tactics. Following the judges marking the phone lines will be opened up and the public will be allowed to vote on which rider will be eliminated. The experts for the first event of the season have yet to be announced, but it is thought that they will include, Frank Vandenbroucke, Michael Ball, Djamolidine Abdoujaparov and Tammy Thomas.

An unnamed UCI source has reportedly said 'The public vote will add and extra fun element to stage races, which until now had been boring and predictable.' He/She/It went on say that 'The added pressure will also act as a deterrent to doping and aid the UCI in their goal of getting richer, sorry, I mean getting a clean sport.'

More new races.

In addition to the ground breaking changes to race results it is thought that the UCI are also planning to unveil the new 'Tour de Russia' with the proposed date being 'all of May'. A (different) UCI spokesman has said 'the Russians are desperate to give us lots of money and we felt that the ideal slot in the calandar for a race is May, after all noting much is happening then is there? and anyway RCS have pissed us off, so up their's.'
The spokensthing refused to comment that the Tour de China was scheduled to take place in July with a top prize of a billion Euros, 'We have a very good relationship with ASO and would in no way introduce a race with a greater prize fund in an effort to bugger up the Tour de France.'

Shock new team anouncement.

Hold the front page, stop the presses. In a totally unexpected anouncement it has been anounced that British Cycling will announce that they will run a pro team in 2010 and that that team will have a major sponsor.

The team, it has been announced, will feature 'riders', some of whome will be British and some of whome won't.

In another shock revelation, sorry, announcement, it has also been revealed that the team will have a management structure that will include coaches.

As we went to press there was no anouncement about bicycles, but an insider has anounced that bicycles will be involved in the team and possibly ridden by the riders.

As yet there has been no announcement about Mark Cavendish, but it is thought that at some stage over the coming years there will be an announcement relating to Mark Cavendish and a team with a major sponsor.

More announcements as they happen.



.

No comments: