Pro-Tour circuit suffers early blow

The Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the Tour of Spain are quitting the fledgling Pro-Tour circuit, their organisers said yesterday.

The Pro-Tour was conceived as a showcase series featuring all the most important races of the cycling year. It began life in March, with Italian Danilo di Luca clinching the inaugural crown at the end of the season.

It is bound to lose much of its status without the three major Tours who have been concerned about keeping their identity to help their own sponsorship deals.

They have also been unhappy at what they see as the increasing influence of International Cycling Union (UCI) officials in their events.

The organisers of the big three told a news conference on Friday they had pulled out because they said the UCI had failed to come up with any agreement and had broken off negotiations.

Patrice Clerc, the president of Tour de France organisers, said: "Maintaining for 2006 the agreement we had for 2005, in other words a status quo, makes no sense because the situation was only a transition aimed at reaching a global agreement on the Pro-Tour, which the UCI are now saying they will not come up with."

To encourage teams to take part in 2006, the organisers said they would pay a 100,000 euros bonus to every team to enter all the three major Tours.

Clerc said a separate calendar with the three Tours and maybe one new event was a possibility for 2007.

"We are thinking about re-launching the Trophee des Grands Tours set up during the 1980s. The prize money would be two million euros," he said.

The announcement will be frustrating news to Irishman Pat McQuaid, who took over at the helm of the UCI when he won the presidential election in Madrid on September 23.