2007 racing is on

Tim Lamkin said:

Next week's Paris-Nice will start as planned without the possibility of sanctions against participating teams after cycling's governing body and Tour de France organizer ASO hammered out a temporary agreement to keep cycling's racing calendar intact through the 2007 season.

Yes you've got to love this wonderfully clear clarification. It has clarified a lot of the ehh....unclearness.

"The present agreement has the aim of amicably settling the disagreement which is affecting professional cycling, in line with the methods and in the ways defined below, with the agreement that this ruling is of a purely provisional nature and thus does not prejudice anything as regards the respective rights and obligations of the parties, nor of the bases of their respective positions, regarding the aforesaid disagreement."

YUP…good-o-legalese

wicklow200 said:

Yes you've got to love this wonderfully clear clarification. It has clarified a lot of the ehh....unclearness.

"The present agreement has the aim of amicably settling the disagreement which is affecting professional cycling, in line with the methods and in the ways defined below, with the agreement that this ruling is of a purely provisional nature and thus does not prejudice anything as regards the respective rights and obligations of the parties, nor of the bases of their respective positions, regarding the aforesaid disagreement."

Wicklow, after reading that, I finally understand your avatar! 😉

wicklow200 said:

"The present agreement has the aim of amicably settling the disagreement which is affecting professional cycling, in line with the methods and in the ways defined below, with the agreement that this ruling is of a purely provisional nature and thus does not prejudice anything as regards the respective rights and obligations of the parties, nor of the bases of their respective positions, regarding the aforesaid disagreement."

This toads the wet sprocket. Anyone else think these guys sat around for eight hours and forty-five minutes drinking wine, eating cheese, and catching some rays then hastily scribbled out this inane "agreement" in the final fifteen minutes?

The above statement combined with this gem, "Without prejudicing their right to grant wild cards to all other teams of their choice, for the duration of this agreement ASO, RCS and Unipublic will examine in a positive spirit the granting of wild cards to the teams Astana and Unibet, in particular insofar as such decisions are not likely to expose or be likely to expose the organisers to legal consequences, of whatever nature they might be." make it look like there was no progress at all.

Hmmm, reading velonews gives a much different view of the agreement than cyclingnews. Cyclingnews gives the impression that no progress has been made other than GTs will consider inviting Unibet as a wildcard. Velonews gives the impression that the GTs got pretty much everything they wanted.