Paris-Nice race to go ahead

The dispute threatens this year’s Tour de France [GALLO/GETTY]

All 20 teams will compete at next month’s Paris-Nice cycling race despite a International Cycling Union (UCI) request to boycott it.

The Amaury Sports Organisation, which organises the race and also owns the Tour de France, said that it had received assurances from International Association of Professional Cyclists president Eric Boyer that they will line up for the season’s first major stage-race on March 9.

“After consultation the teams unanimously decided to participate in Paris-Nice,” Boyer said.

ASO spokesman Christophe Marchadier said registration forms have been sent
out to all teams.

“ASO is very pleased with the AIGP’s decision that the teams will be at the start of the Paris-Nice,” said Christian Prudhomme, who works for ASO and is the director of the Tour de France.

‘Cycling is our job’

Team CSC, Credit Agricole, Cofidis, Rabobank and Quickstep are among those scheduled to compete, while Slipstream and High Road will race for the first time.

The Paris-Nice race will be run under its own rules despite opposition from the UCI, which wants teams to boycott the event because it is not being held under its rules.

“All the managers and all the teams want to race,” Credit Agricole team manager Roger Legeay said.

“We have never missed an event. First and foremost, cycling is our job.”

On Monday, UCI president Pat McQuaid sent a letter to the teams explaining why it will not oversee the 75-year-old race and urged a common boycott, but teams seem to want no part of the ongoing feud between ASO and the UCI.

“Everyone’s had enough,” Legeay said. “It’s a conflict that has been going on four years. A solution has to be found.”

Last year, the UCI also asked teams to back out of Paris-Nice, although a truce was called between ASO and the sport’s international governing body six days before the start.

This time no compromise has been reached.

Tour de France threatened

The rift could jeopardise the Tour de France, with the UCI threatening to withdraw anti-doping regulators from the sport’s marquee event if organisers and French cycling authorities hold their races outside the UCI’s jurisdiction.

That would leave testing and analyzing in the hands of the French Anti-Doping Agency.

The World Anti-Doping Agency, which wants to press forward with an anti-doping passport scheme to monitor athletes all year, has not yet been dragged into the dispute.

The UCI and ASO have been increasingly at odds since 2004, with the dispute escalating at last year’s Tour over the UCI’s handling of cyclist Michael Rusmussen, the Danish rider who skipped pre-race doping tests and then lied about his whereabouts.

The feud started because owners of the Tour, the Giro d’Italia and Spanish Vuelta united in saying they wanted control of their own races, while the UCI expected them to be the highlights of its inaugural ProTour calendar.