I saw this article on Cyclingnews.com that says the USAC and the UCI have made the NRC criteriums open to some PRO riders. It says that Pro Tour riders and Pro Continental riders can compete as long as they follow the UCI criterium rules.
This article at Velonews.com suggests that this new rule will allow Pros to ride NRC criteriums.
But, I didn’t see any places listed on the USAC website or Cyclingnews.com that was going to allow US criteriums to deviate from the UCI Criterium rules. The rule that is going to be hard to get around, which will either exclude Pro riders or 50% or the Elite riders, is the following-
2.7.006 An organiser may not contract a rider from a UCI ProTeam unless if at least 50% of riders participating belong to a team registered with the UCI. The organiser’s national federation may increase this percentage.
If I’m reading this right, either 50% of the field has to be riders from UCI registered teams or they can’t race. So, the NRC races are going to have to be either 50% Pro riders to have the Pro riders ride or the race has to be exclusively Elite and D3 riders only. I don’t see any other choice.
Maybe I’m missing something here. What? So, if this is true, some riders aren’t going to be racing. Either Elites or Pros.
Did the USAC/UCI negotiation do anything for bike racing in the United States? I think not.
My crackpot theory is the UCI is forcing NRC promoters to ‘go continental teams or go home.’
If you look at USAC as a proxy for the UCI, then it makes perfect sense. The UCI doesn’t care about domestic racing participation regardless of country. They care about exporting/creating demand for their product. In this case the ‘product’ is UCI inscripted teams.
USAC’s mission does not include growing participation. It includes developing riders for the UCI.
I think that what you’re missing is that “Pro Tour teams” are now called “Pro Teams”. As such, the rule may be saying that you can’t have any Pro Tour riders in the field unless it’s 50% UCI-registered riders. That wouldn’t exclude Pro Contis or Continental teams. D2 and D3 teams (I like the obsolete designations better) could still ride, regardless of the field composition.
Among many other problems, the UCI is not a paragon of clear communication.
Dave-I saw that. But I think that it applies to all D1 And D2 teams. The D3 domestic guys have never had a problem riding races. It just the teams like RadioShack and BMC that are having the issue. Now United Healthcare and Type 1 have the same problem. I don’t see how anything that USAC did to alleviate the situation unless NRC criteriums have more than 50% of the fields filled by “Pros”.
What does this mean “An organiser may not contract a rider” Does that mean they can’t pay them to ride the event? What is the contract between the rider and the organizer?