Happy degrowth is the new goal of world cycling. Ensuring more safety by lowering speed, this is what riders and teams have requested, not all, but some. Van Aert is among these, Prudhomme too. Reduction of gears and I'm not referring to relationship issues, but to gears that will be limited, starting this August, to test the effect.

We've already discussed this on tuttobiciweb: the UCI's idea is to ensure race safety, especially on descents and in sprints, so no more free gears, an athlete cannot develop more than 10 meters and 46 centimeters per pedal stroke. Maximum allowed gear ratio is 54x11 and it doesn't matter if SRAM has a 10 in its cassette (no problem for Shimano and Campagnolo). The idea is to install a limiter, a screw, a mechanical block that prevents the chain from going all the way down to the last sprocket.

It's all very nice: two years ago the UCI decided to liberalize gears for juniors and now limits them for professionals, with the paradox that kids can use 58-60x10, while professionals can only do so in time trials, where liberalization remains in place.

It's a moment like this, full of yellow and red cards, warnings, suspensions and expulsions, radios to be turned off and bikes to be weighted down, gears to be limited with a bolt or a screw to be applied: in short, things that have no statistical and therefore scientific basis, they are just things for nutcases.

SEND THEM ELSEWHERE. We've already reported on the points issue before and during the Giro d'Italia, but we continue for a simple reason: the problem seems not to subside. We know that the points issue affects races and consequently race tactics. Placing three riders in the top ten is worth much more than winning a stage. Trying to place two/three/four athletes in the final top ten of a stage race is crucial, because it's the sum that makes the total. This applies to UAE Team Emirates as well as Visma Lease a Bike and Lidl Trek fighting to be the number one team in the world, just as for smaller teams fighting to stay in the World Tour or in the top thirty. But the real distortion is also given by the points allocation, not so much at the Tour, Giro or Vuelta, which are the highest expression of our movement along with the five Monuments, but by the points that will be given to 1.Pro races from 2026.

An easy example. Winning a Giro stage guarantees 180 points, winning a 1.Pro race, like Emilia or Laigueglia, will be worth 250 points. In May, there will be more than one 1.Pro race in France and Belgium, Hungary and Norway: clearly teams will prefer to send their riders to score points there and at risk of being penalized is our Giro d'Italia. I find this way of operating simply crazy and anachronistic, I would say also myopic and disrespectful. The French come here on vacation, with a group of riders who would rather be elsewhere? If I were in Rcs Sport & Events, I would send the UCI elsewhere.

IN CYCLING, YOU CAN. Forgive me, I continue this sickening journey through cycling bureaucracy, which complicates everything and resolves nothing. Clarity and immediacy are not typical of our world organization, which is clear only in its need to complicate things. Raise your hand who understands the merit rankings? Who knows how they are elaborated? They know, and that's more than enough. In this logic and in this groove, they continue undeterred in another operation that is incredible: attributing points collected by riders in national teams also to their belonging clubs. You'll say: what's wrong with that? The problem in a promotion and relegation mechanism is that it's simply bizarre to condition a club ranking with points obtained by riders in their national jersey, without team leaders being able to minimally influence rider selection and tactical strategy. Take Lidl-Trek at the 2024 European Championship: Jasper Stuyven and Edward Theuns, with their Belgian national team, had to lead out Tim Merlier of Soudal, who won the European title and the points obtained went to the team of the new European champion. Well, imagine if these points were crucial to staying in cycling's top series. Imagine if Lidl-Trek was hanging by a thread and those unearned points cost them their place in the elite of our movement. Can a team ranking be at least conditioned by national races? Yes, in cycling, you can.

Editorial from tuttoBICI July issue