O Gran Camino director crticizes the current UCI points system: "It's wrong, absurd, indefensible and outrageously disproportionate"

The UCI ranking has been ever prominent since the introduction of three-year rotations of WT licences. For many teams, scoring ton of UCI points at 1.1 one-day races has become the main mean of survival in the cycling's top division. An unpleasant side effect of this change is that teams are being driven away from small stage races, such as O Gran Camino.

"O Gran Camino is a project that has a context, a package and arguments that allow us to cross the border into Portugal and have the support of institutions and large companies. And they support us because this is a stage race and not a classic," race director Ezequiel Mosquera began before delving into the heart of the problem.

There are only three WT and eight PRT teams at the start of this year's O Gran Camino. Not bad numbers for a 2.1 stage race, you'd think? But bear in mind that there is no other racing whole week besides the Opening weekend in Belgium and two one-day races over in France. So where are all the other big teams? It seems they all did their maths homework and came to a conclusion that five days of racing with an unpredictable outcome for a couple UCI points isn't worth the trouble...

"They ask me 'Why don’t you organize 5 classics?' I don’t want to do it. Because I have on my hands a stage race with a weight, a size and a capacity for growth greater than any other classic of the same level," Mosquera is fond of his project.

"So, as we are now, even though this is a well-organized, well-groomed and well-designed 5-day race, we can’t do more than we already do, at least with our means. Why? Because in five days we put 710 points up for grabs against the 3000 we could give if we managed 5 classics," he outlines the clear limitations of the current points distribution.

"The system is wrong, absurd, indefensible and outrageously disproportionate. Because it cannot be that Jonas Vingegaard comes here, wins three difficult stages and the general classification and gets the same points as the runner-up in the Clasica de Almeria," continued Mosquera.

The contrast couldn't be clearer when compared to last week's 2.Pro Vuelta a Andalucia with 6 WT and 10 PRT teams that participated in the 5-day stage race that came to a wrap just three days before the start Gran Camino. Mosquera is of the opinion that UCI needs to motivate riders to participate in multi-stage events with appropriate UCI points payout.

According to the organiser, it is outrageous that winning a 1.1 race is almost as valuable as a Grand Tour stage. "I speak in defense of stage races. I have nothing against classics but we are a country of multi-day races. It cannot be that a classic gives more points than a stage of the Vuelta a España."

"The fundamental axis around which the world of cycling revolved is changing. We have reached the point where teams configure their calendar not based on the races they are interested in, but on the basis of those that guarantee the most points."

And the worst thing for the people who try to build entertaining stage races is that general public won't even emphasize the arising problem, hidden behind the facade of dramatic relegation battles, action-packed classics, and whatnot. "Most people don't know all these dynamics, these abysmal differences in points, well... you have to tell them. You have to tell them that there is a problem. A structural problem that is changing the foundations of cycling."