Bicycle Racing News and Opinion,
Friday, December 28, 2018
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2018 Tour de France | 2018 Giro d'Italia
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. - Marcel Proust
Today's racing:
- December 28: Azencross
Upcoming Racing:
- December 30: Superprestige Dieghem
- January 1: GP Sven Nys
Latest completed racing:
- December 26: Heusden-Zolder cyclocross
- December 23: Namur Cyclocross
- December 15: Scheldecross
- December 1: GP Hasselt
- November 18: Flandriencross
- November 11: Telenet Super Prestige Gavere Cyclocross
- November 4: European Cyclocross Championships
- November 1: Cyclocross Koppenberg
89% of World Tour wild-card invitations went to teams who were members of the Movement for Credible Cycling (MPCC)
The MPCC sent me this:
To make this data visualization, we took the 37 World Tour cycling races of the year and had a look at the wild cards that were granted on them. Among them, we separated the ones granted to continental professional teams part of the MPCC and those given to the other teams.
There is one figure to highlight: 89% of the wild cards were issued to MPCC teams. As a reminder: on these 37 races, around 3 or 4 teams are invited on stage races, and up to 11 wild cards can be given on the one-day races.
Among the 187 wild cards issued throughout the season, we isolated the ones concerning the 3 grand Tours and the 5 Monuments of the season to observe whether there is a pattern when it comes to the big and powerful organizers.
Here are the results: on two of the grand Tours (Tour de France and Vuelta a España), as well as the two monuments organised by A.S.O. (Paris-Roubaix and Liège-Bastogne-Liège), all of the Wild Cards were given to MPCC teams.
When it comes to the other grand Tour (Giro d’Italia) and two of the 5 monuments (Milan-Sanremo) organised by R.C.S., there is not as much satisfaction on our part: all of these events had non-MPCC teams starting the race.
Finally, there is a clear trend concerning the World Tour races organised on Belgian soil: all of them are 100% committed to MPCC, which is not the case in France or Germany, even though these are countries very involved in the ethical topics.
MPCC would like to highlight the outstanding commitment from some organisers which fight to strengthen the credibility of our sport. We also would like to lament the behaviour of those which do not wish to go the same way, especially given that their action is essential to the future of cycling. Thus, MPCC requests that all of the wild cards issued in 2019 be granted to teams part of the movement, and encourage teams and federations which are not part of the MPCC to commit to stricter rules.
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