The UCI has confirmed it will release the full rescheduled men’s and women’s 2020 race calendars early next week. Partial outlines of the men’s race calendar were revealed by the UCI earlier this month, confirming the new dates of the Tour de France and National Championships and the priority of rearranging the three Grand Tours and five Monuments after the global Covid-19 outbreak.
The UCI was then due to announce the full calendar this week but has been forced into postponing the release due to recent announcements made by national governments.
‘It was decided that the publication of the revised calendars for the 2020 UCI WorldTour and UCI Women’s WorldTour, initially planned today in the interests of stakeholders, would be postponed to the beginning of next week,’ read the statement announcing the date change.
‘Indeed, the UCI and its partners need to pursue their work as certain points remain unclear due to the world health situation. The measures recently taken by some European governments concerning the restriction of mass sporting events must, as our Federation once again recently underlined, be taken into consideration when establishing the UCI International Calendar for the recommencement of cycling competitions.’
The UCI had confirmed that the Tour de France would be pushed back from 27th June to the 29th August, however, a public address from French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Tuesday suggested that all sporting events in France would be barred until September.
Philippe then later confirmed that the Tour could go ahead if the necessary measures were put in place for the opening stages taking place in August.
Additionally, the UCI’s statement confirms that the new-look women’s race calendar will be released on 5th May, the same day as the men’s and 10 days earlier than originally expected.
Some criticised the UCI’s lack of transparency in terms of rearranging the women’s calendar, with the Cyclists’ Alliance group calling for women’s cycling to be given equal footing in the framework of the season going forward.
The statement from the UCI also confirmed that the announcement on 5th May will also explain ‘Team participation rules’ for the remainder of the season as well as ‘Rules concerning the number of riders per team at the start of races’ and the ‘Establishment of a steering group with the aim of defining the conduct to be adopted, in particular concerning health, when the season gets underway again.’