This November sees the second outing for the UCI’s Track Champions League. What will the event look like this year?
Track is the oldest discipline within the UCI – the first ever World Championships were in 1893 – but the Track Champions League brings new innovations.
It has five rounds held in four velodromes: Mallorca, Berlin, St-Quentin-En-Yvelines in France, and the last two rounds are at the Lee Valley Velodrome in London in December. The idea is to bring a TV-friendly format to track.
The Track World Cups, for example, are three days, 8am-10pm each day, which is not very broadcast-friendly. The Track Champions League will be two hours and riders will compete to win points and the overall men’s and women’s titles.
We want people to go to the velodromes or watch it at home like a football match.
It has been a busy few years for new UCI events…
Yes, this year we have the first ever Gravel UCI World Championships; two years ago we introduced the Cycling Esports World Championships.
We have also approved a UCI Management Committee to create the first Snow Bike World Championships next year.
What are your priorities right now?
The first is to continue to increase the universality of our sport. We are very strong in Europe and beyond, but there are still a lot of countries where cycling is not at the level it should be.
Second is women’s cycling. It has changed significantly from where it was when I was elected five years ago – in road cycling there are now the same minimum salaries for both men and women, the average salary for women has increased six-fold, there is maternity care and we now have the Women’s Tour de France and Paris-Roubaix – but we must continue to invest in women’s cycling.
The third priority is innovation, whether it’s the disciplines or with the format of the races. For example, we will have the global UCI World Championships in Glasgow next year, which will combine all the cycling disciplines for the first time.
There will be between 16 and 18 World Championships together and more than 10,000 athletes. This will take place every four years.
What are your reflections on the Tour de France Femmes?
Initially there were technical problems around doing the men’s and women’s Tour at the same time because we didn’t want the women not to be broadcast at the highest level.
So we had some discussions with the organisers, including Mrs Amaury [head of ASO], and in the end we ran the women’s race directly after the men’s.
Regarding the globalisation of cycling and reaching out to other countries, what do you think of the success of Eritrean rider Biniam Girmay?
I am very happy to see his victories at the WorldTour – it’s the result of Africa growing in cycling and of efforts by the UCI. Girmay was at the World Cycling Centre [the UCI’s elite training facility in Switzerland] in 2018 and 2019.
We have had African cyclists taking part in some professional races including the Tour de France, and winning [Girmay won Gent-Wevelgem and a Giro d’Italia stage this year]. I think this will continue, and the goal of the UCI is to have an agenda for Africa.
It’s why I have been pushing to have the World Road Championships in Africa for the first time. The 2025 event in Kigali, Rwanda, will not only be the World Championships in Africa but the World Championships for Africa.
With the Association of National Committees from Africa, we have designed a road map to ensure all African nations will be at the start and, I hope, to be in the running to win a first ever UCI World Championship jersey. I am sure we will not wait very long for this.
Do you envisage there being a WorldTour race in Africa?
Well, we have been discussing how we could reshape and modernise the WorldTour, and for the universality of the sport we have to be in Africa. The goal is to have at least one or two races in Africa in 2026.
We’ve seen African men do well, but we don’t hear so much about African women. What is the UCI doing to assist women African riders?
At a meeting we had between the UCI, the World Cycling Centre, the African Cycling Confederation and the Association of National Olympic Committees from Africa, we decided to draw up a road map for women for the World Championships in Kigali.
We will take 12 of the most talented women riders from Africa and we will have a dedicated team to bring them to the highest level so that they can take part in these championships.
But this has to be seen as the beginning of a story, and we need to work with our national federations on how we can enlarge the participation of women locally.
What is the UCI doing about ‘sportswashing’, where countries with poor human rights records host major sporting events?
That’s of course a potential danger. The money involved in cycling is not very high compared to, say, football, even if we are one of the biggest sports when it comes to the number of fans.
If you aggregate budgets for the teams and the race organisers, we have no more than €800 million, which is not so high. When you are in a closed stadium you sell tickets, but when you are on the road and the road is completely free, you can’t sell tickets to have people there.
This means we have to combine potential markets which are key for us and the passion for the sport, but of course we have to balance that with human rights, which is also something key for the UCI and for sport globally.
When you get time to just be a cycling fan, who do you admire most?
Even though he no longer races, it’s Bernard Hinault. This guy was amazing! Firstly, he’s from Brittany, where I’m from. Secondly, he was very strong and always attacking when we weren’t expecting it. He was able to risk everything to win. Hinault made cycling so wonderful.
Photography: Fred MacGregor