World Cycling Head Warns Saudis Against Funding Breakaway League

(Bloomberg) — The head of world cycling’s governing body said Saudi investments are welcome to help stabilize finances in the road racing circuit, as long they don’t create a parallel league.

“When you have stakeholders that want to invest in our sport, I take this positively that there’s an interest in cycling,” UCI President David Lappartient said in an interview during Olympic Games, adding that he had met Saudi officials in Paris. 

But Lappartient, who is also head of the French Olympic Committee, said his message to the Saudis was that while “you are welcome to cycling, we need to work together, and you also need to respect what the red lines are for the UCI, and what are the key principles: that we will never support a clone league.”

The UCI WorldTour is the main elite road cycling tour, and has a clutch of teams supported by wealthy backers, including billionaire Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos Grenadiers and UAE Team Emirates, whose ace Tadej Pogacar won this year’s Tour de France. But many others struggle financially from year to year. 

The Saudis have been looking to fund a rival cycling league that would boost income to teams and their riders, Reuters reported in February. Other investors, including CVC, had also put forward a rival offer to fund the efforts spearheaded by some professional teams. 

Initial ambitions were for a deal to be finalized by April, but that has failed to materialize.

EY, which was hired to run an auction to find an investor for the league, is now working with a potential backer, Bloomberg reported in July. 

“I don’t think there will be a Saudi breakaway league,” said Lappartient in the interview.

A representative for SURJ, the sports investment arm of Saudia Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, declined to comment.  

The Gulf kingdom has been pouring billions into a range of lucrative sports including football and golf as it looks to use its oil-generated wealth to boost tourism and diversify the economy away from fossil fuels. Saudi Arabia has also faced criticism over its sporting ambitions. US lawmakers attacked its attempt to invest in an entity set up by the PGA Tour, while critics say these investments are an attempt to distract from Saudi Arabia’s human-rights record.

“We have to see together with the Saudis how they can join us, how we can work together without disrupting everything but something that will benefit all stakeholders,” said Lappartient. 

Cyclocross 2030

The French Olympic Committee wants to bring cyclocross, a muddier cousin of traditional road bike racing, to the 2030 Winter Games which are set to be held in the French Alps. 

Lappartient is teaming up with track legend and World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe to propose introducing cyclocross and cross-country running in a shared venue for the Games six years from now. 

“I spoke with Seb Coe and we will do a common bid” to the International Olympic Committee, Lappartient said. “With climate change, it’s a winter sport, they’re both winter sports and you don’t need snow and ice.”

Cyclocross, whose racing season runs over the fall and winter and was for many years a niche sport popular mainly in Belgium, is enjoying a renaissance fueled in part by the popularity of riders like Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert. Those two athletes, who got their start in cyclocross but also now compete in the UCI’s elite road riding tour, are among the stars of the recent Netflix documentary series Tour de France: Unchained.

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