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Thursday, April 16, 2015

U23 Schedule SNAFU

I think someone at the UCI got a little too buzzed before giving the all clear on the UCI schedule for this weekend, mainly in regards to the U23 racing. This Friday and Saturday, the ZLM Roompot Tour is on the UCI Nations Cup calendar, which determines the number of spots a nation can get at the U23 World Championships. Also scheduled for this weekend on Saturday is the non-Nations Cup race but still very important Liege-Bastogne-Liege U23.

Now you may be right in thinking that these races do not have a ton of overlap seeing as the ZLM Tour is on the dikes of Zeeland while LBL takes place on the endless hills of southern Wallonie. Yet having these races overlap is utter bullshit and just another reason that the UCI fails to have foresight to make a cohesive schedule to expand racing audiences and allow teams and countries to be able to get the best out of their riders.

I wonder why one of these races couldn't be pushed one week later? In all honesty, the Nations Cups should be drawing the biggest and best talent from the respective countries as well as including the best races. While I know that this is  a more complicated question that I am making it as there are UCI license fees and other hoops to jump through to be able to be apart of the Nations Cups circuit  but why couldn't Liege-Bastogne-Liege join this circuit? Anyways, I'm getting away from my original point.

Is it that hard to schedule these races so that you aren't overlapping them and compromising them? No, it isn't. Yes, national teams and trade teams are always going to have an interesting relationship but don't make it an even harder decision for them, UCI.

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