No one happy with cycling bosses slashing marquee Nations Cup, Hong Kong head coach says
City has eight riders at lone Nations Cup leg in Turkey, as wait for National Games schedule clouds star rider Ceci Lee’s 2025 plans
Herve Dagorne has said nobody was happy that cycling’s 2025 UCI Track Nations Cup had been slashed to a single leg in Turkey this week.
The sport’s annual blue-riband competition, outside the World Championships, the Nations Cup has been staged over three legs since it was introduced in 2021, to replace the old multi-leg World Cup.
Dagorne, the Hong Kong head coach, said global governing body UCI’s failure to find two additional hosts this year was “concerning for everybody”.
“Every nation waited so long [for news about second and third legs], we were all planning training camps and, eventually, it was for nothing, so it’s very frustrating,” Dagorne added.
And the UCI had offered no guarantees over a return to the three-leg format next year, the Frenchman said, adding that with the global economy not as robust as previously many countries “can’t afford to host” an event.
“My own country is struggling, which is often the way after staging an Olympics,” he added.