The three major Tours leave UCI Pro-Tour

The Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the Tour of Spain will no longer be part of the UCI Pro-Tour circuit next year, their organisers said yesterday.

The organisers of the three major Tours told a joint news conference in Paris they had taken the decision to separate from the Pro-Tour because the International Cycling Union (UCI) had failed to propose a global agreement.

"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," said Patrice Clerc, president of Tour de France organisers ASO.

To encourage participation, the organisers said they would pay a 100,000 euros ($117,800) bonus to every team to enter all the three major Tours.

Clerc said the three Tours would still be on the world calendar next year, although not with the Pro-Tour label, but he added a separate calendar with the three Tours and maybe one new event could see the light in 2007.

The Pro-Tour, conceived as a showcase series featuring the most important races of the year, will lose much of its significance without the three major Tours.