At the beginning of September, DirectVelo revealed the UCI’s desire to ban the participation of WorldTeams and ProTeams riders in the U21 World Championship (read here). A decision which will perhaps call for others and which questions more generally the existence and the very usefulness of this U23 category in the long term. The subject was discussed this Saturday morning in Zurich, during a press conference by David Lappartient. “We saw yesterday (Friday) that almost the entire Top 10 of the Mondial Espoirs is made up of WorldTeam or ProTeam riders. (see ranking), points out the President of the UCI. In 1996, we replaced the World Amateur Championship with the World Espoirs and in spirit, this Espoirs category was to form the link between the Juniors and the Elites, considering that the step between Juniors and Elites was too high. The initial mission of this Hopes category was to create this bridge between the two”.
However, cycling has evolved in recent years with athletes becoming more and more precocious and capable of winning professional races at the age of 19, even though they are only 1st year hopefuls. Thus, several riders are now skipping the U23 category by going directly from J2 to a WorldTour structure. “Yesterday’s race is no longer really a Hope race as we initially imagined, but a real high-level race”. So what to do, what to change? “Cycling is evolving, it is no longer the same sport as 30 years ago and we have to adapt”.
ARE CADETS ALSO IMPACTED?
David Lappartient then released a concrete idea, a subject to work with his teams: reducing the duration of the Hopes category, which currently extends over four years. “We are not going to decide on that now but we are having meetings on the subject with the Federations. We are talking about it in the road commission. We inevitably wonder. We could very well transform the U23 category into a U22 or U21 category”. Which would not prevent some J2s from skipping the Espoirs level but would still limit the number of professional riders in the age category, particularly in the Nations Cup. “It will not be for 2025 but we are thinking about it today because we must anticipate this potential change. We have to evolve and know if we continue like this, if we stop the category or if we modify it”.
The Junior category could also evolve. And potentially go to three years “in certain countries”specifies David Lappartient. “We could very well add Cadets 2 to the Junior category”. And thus move all the lines.
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