I wrote a post a few months ago about the USAC and the UCI Rule 1.2.019. Under the rule, all riders are subject to suspension if they are found to have competed in a non-UCI-sanctioned event. The rule is completely ludicrous and shouldn’t apply to races in the United States.

The UCI and USAC postponed enforcement of the rule for one year, hoping, I think, that everyone would just forget about the whole thing and it would just slide into enforcement without a challenge. That isn’t going to happen. Today there was an article at Velonews saying that Scott Tedro, promoter of the US Cup mountain bike series announced that they are not sanctioning any of their events through USAC starting immediately.

That is sort of depressing because I heard a podcast late last fall with Scott and he said that he was optimistic that this would all be worked out. I guess it went south and that is the reason for the un-sanctioning of the races.

What the UCI and USAC need to realize that many rules that apply to European racing won’t really work here in the US or probably in many other places in the world. The US is huge in geography. And it has a huge number of people racing bicycles. More people racing bicycles in the US don’t have licenses than people that do. Maybe this is a power play to get everyone on the same page, but the problem is that it is going to back fire. For sure.

I don’t think that the US Cup MTB series is going to be the one exception here. Obviously, the whole state of Oregon will be off limits to any USAC licensed riders, such they have their own association and have no intention of getting involved any more than they are with USAC.

All the MTB races such as Chequemagon, which has 3000 riders are not USAC sanctioned. I very much doubt that USAC can come up with a big enough enticement to get them to join the “bicycle racing community”. I wonder how many out of the 3000 registered riders have USAC licenses. I’d bet less than 10%. If those 300 riders didn’t race, they could fill their slots in a minute with 300 unlicensed riders. It won’t hurt them a bit.

We, the United States, have more licensed riders than any other country in the world. I made that up, but I’m pretty sure it is true. I’m not sure what the UCI would do if USAC just chose not to enforce the rule. It’s not like they could make it so USAC isn’t the sanctioning body of the sport here in the US. Someone at USAC needs to tell the UCI that this rule isn’t going to work here. If they don’t, then there is going to be some crazy happenings early next season. I think there are quite a few riders willing to make a bold statement and challenge this rule. I know I would.

One big happy cycling family.