Norway cycling federation president Harald Tiedemann Hansen feels that his country is ahead in the race to host the 2017 road world championships with their application for Bergen. He stresses that Norway will not pay inflated organising fees to the UCI, according to procycling.no.

On a press conference earlier today, Tiedemann Hansen confirmed that the Norwegian federation would face competition from other countries, expecting the Austrian city of Innsbruck, Melbourne in Australia and the Colombian capital Bogotá to also apply.

But he is confident that Bergen and Norway are a step ahead of the others: “We had to file a complete application by 1st January”, Tiedemann Hansen said. “We've done that, and in that way we have a solid advantage over the other applicants. We've put one-and-a-half years into this, and we're proud of our application.”

The total budget for the prospective Bergen Worlds is said to be 156 million Norwegian crowns (approximately 18.5 million euros). Of this, 58 million crowns (~6.9 million euros) are earmarked to be paid to the UCI as organising fee. And the federation president rules out paying more than that, saying: “We have a budget; where should we get the extra money from?

“Other countries that organised the world championships in the past didn't pay 10 million [euros] either. They [Qatar] are in a special situation.”

It remains to be seen how far other applicants are prepared to go in order to secure that the world championships come to their country.