The UCI put itself in an impossible position. Their original plan of dropping another team from the World Tour simply sucks. That team will appeal to CAS and probably win, so after a prolongued chaos, we're in the same position as we are now. So the UCI basically only has the option to go for 19 WT teams.
However, in the past the organizers of the grand tours (mainly ASO & RCS) have been battling UCI for the number of WT teams and eventually they came up with a compromise of 18 teams and no more. Raising this number will get them angy and another struggle for power in the cycling world may be coming up. Also, many races have already handed out wildcards to other teams than Katusha (Romandie, Giro, Dauphine, Paris-Nice), so they can either make more expenses and risk higher chances of crashes or they have to boot out one team, which could then also appeal to CAS. Either way, the race organizers will not easily accept an extra WT team, so the UCI is up for some tough negotiations.
And they only have themselves to blame for it by setting non-transparant rules, postponing decisions, postponing explanations about those decisions and not anticipating on losing the CAS case. It's a shame that the world of cycling is ruled by such arrogance and incompetence.
Edited by Blueprint on 15-02-2013 13:28
that what I mean but still people say that the UCI fucked up, if anything the CAS/TAS fucked up.
How?
since they gave Katusha the license back without thinking of the consequences that needed to happen (basically everything that has been said in the thread)
I don't think their job was to handle the consequences. That's UCI's job.
The TAS ruled on whether the arguments the UCI used to reject Katusha's licence application had ground enough.
In other news Basso might leave Cannondale next year due to Operacion Puerto speech. As well Sagan seems also to have attracted a possible sponsor from his home country, good for them hopefully.
P.S. Terpstra is awesome in that video Edited by Alakagom on 15-02-2013 22:38
He's not leaving, Katusha got the decision they wanted
The preceding post is ISSO 9001 certified
"I love him, I think he's great. He's transformed the sport in so many ways. Every person in cycling has benefitted from Lance Armstrong, perhaps not financially but in some sense" - Bradley Wiggins on Lance Armstrong
I know hat Cav meant now
