The International Cycling Union UCI is planning a major reform of the professional cycling world that is set to be gradually implemented from 2015 to 2020. More details of the planned changes have now emerged in a document leaked to cicloweb.it which details the new calendar and new team structure that is on the drawing board.

During the World Championships in Florence, the Professional Cycling Council of the UCI submitted proposals of a major reform of the cycling world to the UCI Management Committee, declaring that major change would gradually be implemented from 2015 to 2020 if approved by the committee. At the time, only some broad principles were outlined but now more details have emerged in a document which was leaked to Italian cycling website cicloweb.it.

Today teams are divided into three groups: ProTeams, Professional Continental team and Continental teams. The UCI plans to introduce a new system consisting of three divisions with the teams set to be smaller than today to reduce their costs. Today a ProTeam may have up to 30 riders on their roster but the future Division 1 and 2 teams will only be comprised of up to 22 riders. At the same time, the Professional Continental and Continental teams in the third division will be reduced to just 8 riders, a massive reduction compared to the current limit of 16 riders on continental teams.

The first division will be comprised of 16 teams that are obliged to participate in all races on a separate calendar that will have 120 race days. The UCI is trying to avoid any overlap between races on the major calendar and will reduce the length of the major stage races to 6 days, usually running from Tuesday to Sunday. The three grand tours will remain at three weeks in length and the teams will still line up 9-rider rosters. In all other races, the teams will only be allowed to enter 7 riders.

The division 1 calendar will be made up of the Tour Down Under, Paris-Nice,  Tirreno-Adriatico, Milan-Sanremo, Gent-Wevelgem, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Amstel Gold Race, Fleche Wallonne, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Giro d'Italia, Criterium du Dauphiné, Tour de Suisse, National championships, Tour de France, Clasica San Sebastian, Vattenfall Cyclassics, Vuelta a Espana, GP Quebec, GP Montreal, Il Lombardia and Tour of Beijing with the only overlap being between the Vuelta and the Canadian races. Despite a previously stated intention to run the main races from February to October, the Tour Down Under is still scheduled to take place in January.

The second division will be made up of 8 teams that are obliged to participate in all races on a separate calendar that will be comprised of 50 race days. The new Dubai Tour, Tour of Qatar, Tour of Oman, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Volta a Catalunya, E3 Harelbeke, Dwars door Vlaanderen, Vuelta al Pais Vasco, Brabantse Pijl, Tour de Romandie, Bayern Rundfahrt, Tour of Poland, Eneco Tour, GP Plouay and Paris-Tours will be included on the calendar.

Only division 1 or 2 teams may participate in division 1 events with the grand tours being allowed to invite 4 of the 8 division 2 teams. The remaining division 1 stage races may invite 6 division 2 teams while the one-day races on the most prestigious teams may invite all 8 division 2 teams.

To make things more transparent, the UCI plans to introduce a system of promotion and relegation. The division 1 team which scores the least amount of points in their 120 race days on the division 1 calendar will be relegated to the second division. They will be replaced by the division 2 team with most points scored in events on the division 2 calendar. The two best division 3 teams will enter into a pool with the two division 2 teams with the least amount of points from which the final two division 2 teams will be chosen following an evaluation of several different criteria.

The Spanish cycling website Velofutur provides extra details about the future system. Apparently, no new team is allowed to enter the first division in their first year of existence. This means that the new teams that may be created by Fernando Alonso and Oleg Tinkov will have to start as division 2 teams and will be completely reliant on wild card invitations to get into the grand tours and the major classics. At the same time, only one team will be promoted to the first division after the first season and so those two teams are likely to be involved in a fierce battle in 2015 to get promoted to the elite division with only results from the division 2 calendar being taken into consideration.

The system won't be in place for the 2014 system but it is interesting to notice that the Italian pro continental teams may face a harsh future. Based on the sporting value of the 2014 teams calculated by the Zona Matxin blog, the division 1 teams would have been the current ProTeams except Ag2r-La Mondiale if the system had been in place for the coming season. Ag2r-La Mondiale, Europcar, IAM, Cofidis, MTN-Qhubeka, YellowFluo (currently known as Vini Fantini), NetApp-Endura and CCC Polsat would make up the second division, meaning that Giro participants Androni, Bardiani and Colombia and Vuelta participant Caja Rural would find themselves in the third division with no chance to receive invitations for the grand tours. If the Alonso and Tinkov teams enter division 2, there will be even less room for the current pro continental teams.

It's important to emphasize that these are only preliminary plans and that nothing has been decided yet. The full document can be found here.