"Everyone will suffer some consequences in the event of a cancellation" - Complete disaster for organizers and teams after Cabras World Cup cancellations

The Cyclocross World Cup brought in a new venue this year, in the island of Sardinia the organizers have sketched out a course right by the sea. As bad luck would have it, a storm hit the coast right this morning and made it impossible for the race organization to ensure the safety of the riders - which ultimately leads to financial chaos all-round.

“I think it is very clear that the wind that has been battering this side of the island since yesterday evening does not allow us to guarantee the safety of the riders and the public 100 percent. Then there is – unfortunately – only one solution and that is to cancel the race," Flanders Classics CEO Tomas Van Den Spiegel told Sporza this morning. 

“It is a decision that we have taken with a heavy heart. A lot of financial resources have been invested in this in recent months – also locally – and a lot of time. Although it was an emotional decision for the people here. They had been working on this for a long time and had done their utmost to bring the World Cup here. But safety was the only constant in all discussions," he said.

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In the end not only is there no race, but the decision was taken hours before the race, meaning that all riders and teams bear the financial cost of the long flights and trips with nothing to gain in the end - and several days (or even a week) of proper training lost, whilst many chose to not make the trip to Italy to instead focus on training and the Christmas block.

On the organizers side, there is no TV broadcast, no tickets for the audience and no reward after fully designing and organizing a full-fledged world class event that would be quite a different cross than the regular. “That is difficult to map out at the moment. I think that everyone will suffer some consequences in the event of a cancellation. It seems logical to me that a canceled race has financial consequences for all stakeholders.”

Asked if the race could've been postponed to Monday, van der Spiegel does not deny it's possible, but taking into consideration that massive logistical effort of making this happen in the Italian island makes it unviable for most to have considered this. “Yes, but that is not so easy and we thought it would be wise not to cause even more chaos. Logistically, it would also have been difficult to postpone everything to Monday”.

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