“I think the World Tour is imbalanced enough as it is" - Former UCI President admits concerns over potential Jumbo-Visma/Soudal - Quick-Step merger

The news of a potentially landscape-changing merger between Jumbo-Visma and Soudal - Quick-Step rocked the cycling world a few days ago. As reaction and response continue to the rumour first reported by Wielerflits, former UCI President Brian Cookson is one of the latest to share his thoughts.

"It wouldn’t be a merger, it would be one team taking over another, in one way or another. There’d be one paying agent, and one team owner taking over another. That would be the simplest form. Otherwise, it would be a new team, and they would have to go through the process of completely re-registering everything,” Cookson told GCN with some concern. “The most likely scenario at the moment is a takeover, rather than a merger. It may suit the teams to call it a merger rather than a takeover, but I’m pretty clear it’d have to be one structure taking over another structure, maybe with some re-naming of the company that owns the team.”

Cookson, who was UCI President between 2013 and 2017 doesn't believe this potential deal would be good for the sport of cycling. “You can only have so many riders and staff on one team, so it puts a lot of riders and staff on the market all of a sudden, and they must be really worried about it,” he says. “I don’t see what’s in it for them (Jumbo-Visma ed.) from a sporting point of view - only a financial point of view. That’s disappointing, because it puts all those other people - the riders, the surplus soigneurs and mechanics and so on - in a very difficult position.”

With Jumbo-Visma already holding a defined dominance over Grand Tour cycling, the only non-Jumbo-Visma rider to win a three-week stage race since the 2022 Tour de France - Remco Evenepoel - would now join their fold, only adding to their position of power.

“It’s usually more a situation of one team saving another team, or of sponsors saying ‘ok if we’re going to continue we need to be in more sustainable partnership’. That doesn’t seem to be the issue here,” Cookson explains. “It seems to be more an ambition to form an even more super team than any super team we’ve ever seen before.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for two big teams like that to come together. It reduces competition,” Cookson concludes. “It would be in everybody’s interest if there are stronger teams existing in the UCI WorldTour, rather than one mega mega strong team. I think it’s imbalanced enough as it is at the moment.”