International cycling federation

INTERNATIONAL CYCLING FEDERATION
The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI; French pronunciation: ​[ynjɔ̃ siklist ɛ̃tɛʁnasjɔnal]; English: International Cycling Union) is the world governing body for sports cycling and oversees international competitive cycling events. The UCI is based in Aigle, Switzerland.
The UCI issues racing licenses to riders and enforces disciplinary rules, such as in matters of doping. The UCI also manages the classification of races and the points ranking system in various cycling disciplines including road and track cycling, mountain biking and BMX, for both men and women, amateur and professional. It also oversees the World Championships.
History
UCI was founded in 1900 in Paris by the national cycling sports organisations of Belgium, the United States, France, Italy, and Switzerland. It replaced the International Cycling Association (ICA) by setting up in opposition in a row over whether Great Britain should be allowed just one team at world championships or separate teams representing England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Britain found itself outflanked and it was not able to join the UCI – under the conditions the UCI had imposed – until 1903.^[1]
There were originally 30 countries affiliated to the union. They did not have equal voting power and some had no vote at all. Votes were distributed by the number of tracks, or velodromes, that each nation claimed. France had 18 votes, the highest number, and Germany and Italy 14 each. Britain had eight, a number the writer Bill Mills said was acquired "by including many rather doubtful grass tracks."^[1]
In 1965, under the pressure of the IOC (the Olympics was then an amateur event), the UCI created two subsidiary bodies, the International Amateur Cycling Federation (Fédération Internationale Amateur de Cyclisme or FIAC) and the International Professional Cycling Federation (Fédération Internationale de Cyclisme Professionnel or FICP). The UCI assumed a role coordinating both bodies.
The FIAC was based in Rome, the FICP in Luxembourg, and the UCI in Geneva.
The FIAC was the bigger of the two organisations, with 127 member federations across all five continents. It was dominated by the countries of the Eastern bloc which were amateur. The FIAC arranged representation of cycling at the Olympic Games, and FIAC cyclists competed against FICP members on only rare occasions. In 1992, the UCI reunified the FIAC and FICP, and merged them back into the UCI. The combined organisation then relocated to Aigle, close to the IOC in Lausanne.
In 2004, the UCI constructed a 200-metre velodrome at the new World Cycling Centre adjacent to its headquarters.
In September 2007 the UCI announced that it had decided to award ProTour status for the first time ever to an event outside of Europe; the Tour Down Under in Adelaide, Australia. The announcement followed negotiations between UCI President Pat McQuaid and South Australian Premier Mike Rann.^[2]
In 2013 Tracey Gaudry became the first woman appointed as vice president of the UCI.^[3]
World championships
The UCI organises cycling's world championships, administration of which it gives to member nations. The first championships were on the road and on the track. They were allocated originally to member nations in turn, on condition the country was deemed competent and that it could guarantee ticket sales.^[1] A nation given a championship or series of championships was required to pay the UCI 30 per cent of ticket receipts from the track and 10 per cent from the road. Of this, the UCI kept 30 per cent and gave the rest to competing nations in proportion to the number of events in which it competed. The highest gate money in this pre-war era was 600 000 francs in Paris in 1903.^[4]
There were originally five championships: amateur and professional sprint, amateur and professional road race, and professional Motor-paced racing. The road race was traditionally a massed start but did not have to be: Britain organised its road championship before the war as a time trial, the National Cyclists Union believing it best to run races against the clock, and without publicity before the start, to avoid police attention. Continental European organisers generally preferred massed races on circuits, fenced throughout or along the finish to charge for entry.
Records[edit]
The original records were on the track: unpaced, human-paced and mechanically paced. They were promoted for three classes of bicycle: solos, tandems and unusual machines such as what are now known as recumbents, on which the rider lies horizontal. Distances were imperial and metric, from 440 yards and 500 metres to 24 hours.^[1] The UCI banned recumbents in competitions and in record attempts on 1 April 1934. Later changes included restrictions on riding positions of the sort that affected Graeme Obree in the 1990s and the banning in 2000 of all frames that did not have a seat tube.