CPA president Adam Hansen justifies €300,000 spent onto UCI's legal battle with SRAM: "This is about unity"

The president of the Cyclistes Professionnels Associés (CPA), Adam Hansen, has publicly defended the union’s decision to help fund the UCI in its legal battle with SRAM over gearing restrictions.

The dispute centres on the UCI’s plan to appeal the 2025 court ruling that forced it to suspend the introduction of a Maximum Gear Ratio Standard in professional racing. To finance that appeal, the governing body is considering allocating €300,000 from the SafeR budget, the joint body created to improve safety in the peloton.

SafeR is funded by several stakeholders, including the AIGCP (teams’ association), the Association Internationale des Organisateurs de Courses Cyclistes (AIOCC), the UCI itself, and the CPA. The AIGCP opposes using safety funds to pay legal fees, especially given many teams run SRAM components and would, in effect, be financing litigation against a key supplier.

Hansen, however, in comments to Cyclingnews, defended the CPA’s stance: "No one enjoys seeing money spent on lawyers. That’s obvious. This is about unity and collaboration."

The Australian ex-pro noted that all parties involved in SafeR had previously approved the gearing-limitation test planned at the Tour de Guangxi, an experiment designed to assess its safety impact and collect rider feedback. That test was blocked after SRAM filed a proceeding with the Belgian competition authority.

"The gear-restriction test at the Tour de Guangxi was conceived as a simple trial so SafeR could gather riders’ feedback, as with all its other tests. Since everyone in SafeR agreed to run this test, including the teams via the AIGCP, it is natural that SafeR funds are now used for the legal actions," argued Hansen.

For the CPA president, the debate is not only legal, but strategic. "We can’t risk a future in which SafeR agrees on a test or an action to improve safety, and then the UCI fails to act because someone has taken legal action against it."

Support for limiting gear ratios in the peloton is far from unanimous. Wout van Aert is open to studying the measure as a way to reduce speeds and risk, while Tom Pidcock has rejected it: "Limiting gears will only make everything more dangerous."

Since Hansen took office in 2023, safety has been one of the CPA’s central pillars, with significant progress culminating in the creation of SafeR as a forum for cooperation between riders, teams, organisers, and the UCI. Precisely for that reason, using safety funds to finance litigation has sparked internal debate.

Hansen’s defence rests on one principle: cohesion. "SafeR is effective and can improve safety when the four stakeholders agree on a strategy and safety initiatives. When stakeholders work together, we can all make different suggestions and accept them."

"Sometimes one stakeholder didn’t like another’s idea, but we worked together for the good of the sport. That’s the best way to move forward to improve safety."

He concludes with a direct argument for backing the UCI now: "The equipment-limitation test was no exception. If none of the stakeholders support the UCI now, with the legal action, why would they listen to the CPA and other SafeR stakeholders in the future?"