The UCI have defended their actions over the change of dates for the RideLondon Classique for 2025, which has led to the organisers saying they’ve been pressured to cancel the WorldTour stage race.
The 2025 WWT calendar, printed this morning, primarily led to solely minor adjustments in dates and with most races again of their unique locations after shifting in 2024 as a result of Paris Olympics.
Nonetheless, the RideLondon Classique was moved again per week from the weekend of Could 23-25 to June 1, with organisers claiming on Friday that this transformation got here with out “session or prior warning”. They added that given main occasions should be deliberate in central London lengthy upfront, they’d no alternative however to cancel the three-day stage race.
Cyclingnews reached out to the UCI for his or her response to the organisers’ determination and feedback.
In a press release despatched to Cyclingnews, the UCI defended their determination by arguing that they’d been “actively engaged with the occasion organiser for the reason that starting of the yr to search out an alternate date.” They added that the choice to cancel the race in 2025 was one which “the UCI regrets”.
The UCI continued by claiming that “the dates Ford RideLondon Classique requested aren’t accessible as they conflict with the Vuelta a Burgos Feminas, which is a part of a three-event block of racing in Spain.”
“It must be famous that these three Spanish occasions are held consecutively to cut back group journey. As well as, a basic precept of the UCI Ladies’s WorldTour is that no occasions overlap.”
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The UCI then went on to additional justify its determination over the date change by claiming that it was a knock-on impact from a rescheduling of the Nationwide Championships to their typical, pre-2024, calendar slot.
“The requested change of date for the Ford RideLondon Classique is as a result of scheduling of Nationwide Championships, that are usually held the final full week of June, however have been held one week earlier in 2024 as a result of Paris Olympic Video games,” the UCI assertion stated.
“This allowed for the Ford RideLondon Classique to happen in Could in 2024. For 2025, the Nationwide Championships will return to the usual schedule, and occasions on the 2025 UCI Worldwide Calendar might want to shift dates accordingly.”
“For the UCI Ladies’s WorldTour, it must be famous that every one occasions besides the Ford RideLondon Classique have accepted their dates.”
In 2023, the RideLondon Classique passed off from Could 26 to twenty-eight and in 2022, its first version as a stage race, it passed off from Could 27 to 29. The earlier two years it was cancelled due to the pandemic and earlier than that, it was a one-day Traditional, going down in late July and early August.
