SRAM has welcomed the rejection of the UCI’s appeal over the suspension of its gear restriction plans as “groundbreaking”.
On Thursday, it was revealed that cycling’s governing body had lost its appeal against a Belgian Competition Authority (BCA) ruling which stopped its plans to introduce gear restrictions in the peloton, after a legal challenge from American component brand SRAM. In October, the BCA sided with SRAM over its argument that the proposed gear-limit rule hurts innovation and unfairly tilts the playing field.
In a statement released to the media that afternoon, SRAM CEO Ken Lousberg said: “While the UCI framed its gearing restriction as a safety measure, the science showed it wasn’t, and the process used to adopt the rule was deeply flawed.”
Last year, the UCI attempted to introduce the Maximum Gear Ratio Standard for the Tour of Guangxi, which would have limited bikes to a 54×11 top gear. The proposal limited the maximum gear ratio to 10.46 metres in a roll out test which will almost certainly cap the highest gear that riders can use during a race situation.
SRAM argued that the rule would effectively outlaw its 10-tooth sprocket system, which is used in its latest Red and Force AXS groupsets, and that, in turn, would disadvantage its sponsored teams. These include Visma-Lease a Bike, Lidl-Trek, Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto, and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.
Lousberg said: “This case began as a dispute about our 10-tooth cog. This ruling is much bigger than that.
“The Brussels Court of Appeal has issued a groundbreaking ruling on how sports federations across Europe must exercise regulatory power. The Court upheld the Belgian Competition Authority’s previous findings that open, transparent, objective, and non-discriminatory governance is the legal standard for rule-making in sport. It endorsed that reasoning in full, applying well-established European Court of Justice case law in a way that will guide federation governance well beyond this case, and sharply rebuking the UCI’s appeal.
“Safety matters deeply to us, and it always has. While the UCI framed its gearing restriction as a safety measure, the science showed it wasn’t, and the process used to adopt the rule was deeply flawed. For SRAM, our legal action was always about how the stakeholders of this sport work together to improve every part of it, including rider safety, in a clear, transparent, and fair way. The Court rejected the UCI’s arguments on every ground, including the claim that safety justified the closed process it followed.”
Lousberg went on to argue that the UCI should work closely with the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI).
He said: “What comes next is the work this sport has needed for a long time: building that process together, with the common goal of improving our sport. The WFSGI, as the neutral voice of the cycling industry, is the natural partner in that work alongside the teams, athletes, race organisers, and the UCI.
“The door is now open, and there should be a seat for everyone willing to help build the future the sport deserves through collaboration, not exclusion. The first step is straightforward: the UCI should bring the WFSGI into rule-making as a full partner and start this reform now. SRAM is excited to get to work.”
The UCI has been contacted for comment.
Would gear restrictions have worked?
The gear restriction proposals emerged out of the UCI’s SafeR commission, a group set up by the UCI to make races safer after a series of high-profile incidents.
Speaking to Cycling Weekly on Thursday, Dr Xavier Disley, the owner of AeroCoach and a cycling performance analysis consultant, suggested that the proposed gear ratio rules would not work in slowing down cyclists, and would also be hard to implement.
“I think that my main concern with limiting gear ratio is that it then compresses the top end speed,” he said. “So if you’re worried about it on descents, I think that it doesn’t help because people are coasting much faster than they’d be pedalling in a maximum restricted gear anyway, so that doesn’t really do anything.
“In sprints all you’re going to do is see [all you would see is] more bunching up of the top of the faster finishes because they’ll be spinning out, not only the bunching the riders up because their top end speed is going to be more similar, because everyone’s max cadence is like effectively going to be the limiter, but you’re also got riders who are going to be more unstable because their cadence is so high, potentially higher than what they want to be sprinting at.”
“I think that the implementation of it, I think, would have been one of the trickiest things, which is why I think it’s probably not a great idea,” he added. “I don’t think it’ll make things safer in sprints, I think it’ll actually make things less safe, and I don’t think it’ll affect things on descents.”
