Erik Voldengen

I believe Unibet was not invited because of a new French law prohibiting the
advertisement of gambling institutions.

It's silly, though, because there are two other teams supported by their
country's lottery. I guess Lotteries don't count as gambling.

Hope they work it out.

-Erik

_____

From: obra-bounces@list.obra.org [mailto:obra-bounces@list.obra.org] On
Behalf Of Freyensee, James P
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 10:41 AM
To: obra@list.obra.org
Subject: [OBRA Chat] OT: Messy, messy UCI

I don't know if people have been following, but Pat McQuaid and the UCI is
turning the whole racing world up-side down.

He has ordered all ProTour teams not to do Paris-Nice and dropped Paris-Nice
from the ProTour calendar. This is a reaction from ASO (the organizers of
Paris-Nice) turning down a request to include one of the ProTour teams,
Ubinet. I don't know the reason why Ubinet was turned down, but I do know a
big sticking point between all the Grand Tours and the UCI is that the Grand
Tours want to be able to invite a few local teams within their country, that
these teams get totally shut out of any great race opportunity within that
country because of the current ProTour rules.

Since this order by McQuaid, 6 teams have defied the order and said will
compete in Paris-Nice: Rabbobank, Gerolsteiner, and all the French ProTour
teams. Now Pat McQuaid has told these teams if they compete in Paris-Nice,
they will be heavily fined.

Meanwhile, the ASO has thrown a Mike-Tyson-reverse-uppercut to the UCI and
the whole cycling world, with this current stance: "If the ProTour teams who
originally accepted their invitation to Paris-Nice now turn it down, they
will not be allowed to race in the Tour de France".

I have been a fan for cycling for years, but this type of stuff makes me
really tune-out the sport.