Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The Quagmire of Team Lampre-Farnese Vini

Back in late November the UCI ProTour Council (UPTC) did not renew the ProTour license of Lampre-Farnese Vini, instead referring the decision of cancelling the license to the license commission. At the time team manager Giuseppe Saronni said, "Failure to receive the license is not even an idea." Saronni also said that he was working with UPTC officials to meet the deadline of December 20.

December 20th has come and gone and the Italian press is reporting today that the team still finds itself in the unbelievable situation of not knowing its status. This with only two weeks before the first ProTour race, the Tour Down Under, in Australia. Articles cite Enrico Carpani, responsible for UCI communications, as saying, "We don't know anything. Not even if the Licensing Commission has met or will meet."

It must be a troubling time for Alessandro Petacchi who joined Lampre for this coming season partly because of its ProTour or top division status. He had spent the last two seasons with LPR Brakes, a second division team that had to rely on wild card invitations to some of cycling's top races. Not to mention also new member Danilo Hondo; Damiano Cunego and others.

Stay tuned....

Stories for the Italian Cycling Journal welcome; contact me at veronaman@gmail.com. There are more than 1,100 stories in this blog. The search feature to the right works best for finding subjects in the blog and there is also a translate button at the bottom so you can translate each page.

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