On Saturday the 24th of October, the Steering Committee of the the Association of Professional Riders CPA held an important meeting in Milan. On the agenda were many issues that are of great interest to the association of professional riders including the new Reform of cycling, the recently started meetings with the UCI about the safety during the races and the Joint Agreement that the CPA will have to renew within this year with the the teams' association AIGCP.

A big part of the meeting was about the discussion of enlarging the CPA with new member nations in order to make sure that all the riders of the peloton, even those who do not have a national association, will be adequately represented.

"Our bylaw states that the CPA automatically represents every professional rider, either individually or through a national association, said Gianni Bugno, President of the CPA, 2so any rider that needs our help can always turn to us in all circumstances. However, our goal has always been to create national federations that could actively participate at our meetings and support the riders on their territory. This is the reason why we created the ANAPRC a year and a half ago for the North American riders and now we are concretely working on the birth of a new association of Australian riders for 2016."

That is why at the meeting of the CPA last Saturday, Michael Rogers, Mathew Hayman and Adam Hansen, Australian riders who will get involved in the creation of their national association, were present too. Bernhard Eisel also attended the meeting to support the creation of an association of professional cyclists with German language.

Frenchman Anthony Geslin and Italian Filippo Pozzato, riders that are members of the national federations UNCP and ACCPI, reported their positive experience with their union. Geslin talked about all the activities and the good initiatives that were taken by his federation, as for example the education program in which the UNCP has enrolled him, offering possibilities of reintegration into the working life once the rider will stop his career.

Adam Hansen, a rider expert in computer science, will present to the CPA a web application to allow an easier and more immediate communication between CPA, national federations and riders. This will allow to collect the voice of all for the various decisions and issues that the CPA brings on in the name of the riders, in an easier way.

"This new system, added Bugno, will also allow our delegates at the races to better fulfill their function in case of problems that have to be reported to the organization and when they have news to spread among the riders. It will be a key tool for communication and democracy that will unite the riders even more and will make them stronger. "