World cycling's governing body, the UCI, has announced that the inaugural edition of the Tour of Hangzhou, scheduled to be the final race in the 2012 WorldTour calendar, will not now take place. It is hoped that the five-day race will feature on the calendar in 2013.
In a statement, the UCI said that the decision not to hold the race, which was due to take place immediately after the Tour of Beijing, was made along with its subsidiary Global Cycling Promotion (GCP), the Chinese Cycling Association, the Chinese Sports Ministry and the city of Hangzhou.
It added that "despite the efforts of all those involved in this initiative... not all the general conditions necessary to guarantee that the race would fulfil the UCI WorldTour quality criteria had been met." It did not specify what those conditions were.
GCP director Alain Rumpf commented: “We put in a lot of work to stage the first edition of the event in 2012, but we needed a little more time to fine-tune certain internal matters in China.
“In choosing to delay the first edition, we can ensure that the event will meet the expectations of all our partners, as was the case last year with the Tour of Beijing.”
UCI President, Mr Pat McQuaid maintained that despite the race not being held this year, it is still “a very important element in the UCI’s strategy for the development of cycling, and the decision to postpone the organisation of this event will have no negative consequences on the project.”
It was 15 weeks as an average (I assume median or mean, though it's a clustered dataset) in Jan 2024, down from 20 weeks in August 2023. So not bad...
Well informed people don't get booked to spout anti-cyclist nonsense though. As soon as anyone looks at the statistics they soon realise the scale...
It does seem that good visibility is key to being popular for commuting in traffic. That would explain why the sit-up-and-beg style commuter bikes...
I absolutely agree, there should be, but there should also be a simple basic law that the driver does nothing but drive, doesn't hand out bidons...
If you want to be run over by one of the many rednecks in Australia driving a Hilux or Ranger, slip on one of these...
But as Mark Twain pithily observed (along with many others), "Common sense ain't that common." One could of course argue that common sense would...
Her business depended on the same 20 people to fund her cafe daily? Surprised it has lasted as long as it has.
So that's ONE non-gammony, non-Tory, non-driver in South Glos. Remind me - what's the population of South Glos?
What a joke of a system. A phone call (how long was the phone queue?) then waiting in at home for the police to visit which might be at any time....
Millarcopter. Nuff said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIW1MAvyPD4