ASO, the promoters of the Tour de France and numerous other races, are below renewed scrutiny after it became confirmed on Thursday that they may be pulling of their marquee one-day races, Flèche-Wallone and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, out of Women’s World Tour in 2020 because they may no longer offer the desired forty five mins of live TV coverage from the 2 activities.
The Women’s World Tour began in 2017 and each yr has seen an boom inside the necessities for race organisers to keep their WWT fame.
However, the president of the UCI’s Road Commission, Tom Van Damme, told DirectVelo the day past: “One of the conditions for being in the Women’s WorldTour is the guarantee of stay television insurance of at least forty five mins, and ASO and the Walloon public RTBF are not able to provide this service subsequent season.”
ASO, who’re by means of some distance the biggest and richest promoters in the sport, have often been criticised for their 1/2-hearted technique to promoting ladies’s biking.
La Course by means of Le Tour, the girls’s race which takes location each summer season on the Tour de France, celebrated its 5th edition ultimate 12 months. But despite calls every year to growth the length of the race, it stays a one-day format.
UCI president David Lappartient declared himself unimpressed after the direction announcement last autumn. “I suppose in the future isn’t enough,” he informed the The Daily Telegraph. “I stated this final year after the presentation of the Tour de France. I met with the Tour de France to speak about this issue. I advised them ‘you’re the main organization in the global so you ought to take your a part of the obligation to support ladies’s cycling.”
Meanwhile, Italian Valerio Conti [UAE Team Emirates] took the overall lead on the Giro d’Italia the day prior to this after completing 2d to compatriot Fausto Masnada [Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec] inside the 6th stage from Cassino to San Giovanni Rotondo.
Conti, who is not considered a threat inside the long term, leads by way of 1min41sec. Overnight leader Primoz Roglic [Jumbo-Visma] dropped to eleventh while Britain’s Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) is now 13th at 5min59sec.
