UCI Europe Tour 2018, my team’s classification by António Valente Cardoso
Another road cycling season ending and a new one beginning, still it’s the team sports less appreciated as such, despite being the one that holds more importance to its sponsors, so you would think it would have, at least, as much care to the teams’ classification as the motorsports do. The effort in gathering support for the only real free and by-the-home sport, where cyclists literally pass by people’s homes and see fans coming to the roads following the amazing world of cycling, tends to be more difficult given there’s no final teams’ real placement, despite all stage races having a collective final classification, UCI neglects tremendously, developing a final teams’ table solely on the individual results, mirroring them, even though it’s clear there’s a lot more to that and often the individual winners aren’t the team’s ones. A teams’ placement table, judging their performance, both on stage and one-day races, should be mandatory, which is the reason it’s been done, the last couple of seasons to the UCI World Tour and the 2018 season to the European tour also. The points allocated take into account the number of teams present (e.g. if there are 25 sides the points range from 25 to 1, if there are 16 the points range from 16 to 1) and the UCI coefficient, meaning points tripled in the HC events, double in the 1.1 or 2.1 races and single points in the 1.2 or 2.2 races. 236 races were taken into account for this UCI Europe Tour teams’ classification by AVC and over 500 sides, including national teams, took part in at least one event of this continental tour. More and more countries are waking up to the importance of cycling in touristic promotion, now sponsoring and supporting races and teams, both in Central and Eastern Europe and in Asia, America and Africa. The absence of a team notion, in terms of final placements, sees a lot of riders not finishing the one-day races, leaving their teams unable to place the mandatory three riders to enter the teams’ classification. If there, like in motorsports and the other team sports, a real collective table, updated and validated, with an award, even with a sponsor/naming to boost it, several other possible sponsor, which give name to the teams, let’s not forget, would enter the sport. It would also be very interesting for UCI to set some sponsors and give monthly awards, both individual and team, to mediatize more cycling, on a monthly basis, not just during the big tours, doing the same other sports do, with the same purposes. This way the Union would be able to share more about the results,