The UCI’s decision to kick Team Katusha out of the UCI World Tour in 2013 is yet another example of poor communication and a failure in transparency from an organisation already taking heavy criticism for its standards of governance.
You would think an administration which is facing a crisis of credibility and a grassroots campaign backed by big names to have its leadership removed, would be trying its best to be scrupulously transparent in its actions.
You would think.
Katusha, which finished second on the UCI’s own World Tour points list in 2012, and boasts the number one ranked rider in the world, Joaquim Rodriguez, clearly wasn’t dropped for underperforming.
The team was named on October 29 as one of the teams which had met the “sporting” criteria for selection (based on a separate and poorly-explained system of ranking points due to the team list for the following year).
The real reason behind this decision remains opaque – indeed the UCI admitted to CyclingNews that Katusha team management themselves were not yet aware of the reasons for their dumping.
The UCI’s official press release had only this to say:
“The request from the team Katusha for registration in first division has been rejected.
In accordance with UCI regulations, this team’s application has been forwarded to the UCI administration, so that the latter may assess the possibility of registering this team as a UCI Professional Continental Team.”
Feeling enlightened? Me neither.
So why was Katusha dumped?
Apart from the sporting criteria, which Katusha met, there are financial, administrative, and ethical criteria. The Inrng blog has a good overview.
Presumably Katusha management are well aware of their financial position, so explaining that would have been straightforward. Katusha is also well known for having deep pockets.
Besides, even the team-formerly-known-as-Rabobank made the cut, and they don’t have a sponsor and may not be able to compete without one. That’s not a very high bar.
Irregularities with the paperwork would seem a harsh reason to dump a high-performing team, but again, an explanation would be straightforward.
Which leaves “ethics”.
Perhaps the UCI is punishing Katusha for being been less than squeaky clean.
Let’s face it, the team has had a bribery scandal (Kolobnev), some recent doping positives (Kolobnev and Galimzyanov), re-hired Kolobnev despite his shady past, been raided by Italian police, hasn’t exactly been outspoken against doping, and recently hired prominent former Lance Armstrong lieutenant Viatcheslav Ekimov as team manager.
You can see why there might be questions asked at UCI HQ, in the current climate of fear. But Katusha isn’t exactly an island of sin in a sea of virtue. Half the teams in the World Tour have had riders, managers, coaches, and doctors implicated in doping scandals. Is Katusha the worst of them?
Like Katusha, its replacement team Saxo-Tinkoff has former dopers, a huge star (Contador) and a manager with a dopey past (Bjarne Riis). Is Katusha quantifiably worse than Saxo-Tinkoff? The problem is we don’t really know, because the UCI has failed to explain itself, yet again.
I’m fully supportive of dodgy teams being shown the door, but suddenly axing one of the top-performing teams in the sport with little explanation is simply too mysterious. Is Katusha being made a scapegoat for a more widespread problem, or is it genuinely a bad apple? On what grounds?
The UCI desperately needs to get its communications strategy straight, explain its reasoning, make the criteria for World Tour selection open and clear, and generally start operating like professional administrators instead of feudal lords.
In the meantime, stand by for some Court of Arbitration for Sport action from Russia.
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