Since their advent in 2005, the UCI continental circuits weren't aligned with the calendar year, as the UCI world ranking was until 2004.

Instead, a given year's Africa Tour, America Tour, Asia Tour or Oceania Tour ended on September 30, with the following season starting on October 1. For historical reasons, the Europe Tour had a slightly later date for its 'New Year' – the break-off used to be in mid-October, but was changed to October 30 in 2013.

A letter sent by the UCI to all national cycling federations indicates that this is about to change. In the letter, the UCI asks federations to register races in the last three months of 2014 to the 2013-2014 continental circuits "for the implementation of the 2015 professional cycling reform".

The complete letter is as follows:

"For the implementation of the 2015 professional cycling reform, important changes will be implemented this year. We ask your kind assistance to achieve a smooth introduction to the reform.

The reform of professional cycling includes a racing calendar that follows the calendar year, which will be introduced for 2015.To achieve this, the 2013-2014 season of the UCI Continental Circuits will be extended from October to December 31, 2014.

Therefore, the events during this period will be registered to the current 2013-2014 UCI Calendar.

The National Federations and organisers concerned by events between October and December 2014 will receive specific registration bulletin to register their event(s) on to the extended calendar by March 2014.

The extended calendar will be validated electronically by the UCI Management Committee.

The individual, team and nation classification of the 2013-2014 season will be extended as well to December 31, 2014.

We remain at your entire disposal for further information."

A PDF version of the letter can be found here.

Whatever the reform of professional cycling will eventually constitute, the fact that the UCI has yet to publish anything on this particular change of the cycling calendar shows that there is still some way to go on the road to transparency that is the platform of new UCI president Brian Cookson.

In another step back compared to previous years, the UCI to this date also hasn't announced the qualification criteria for this year's road world championships. Normally these were agreed upon in a meeting of the UCI management committee in late February, and released shortly after.

Last year it was promised to remove ambiguity in the existing rules that led to confusion over the number of riders qualified for some nations; however, despite repeated inquiries, the UCI has neither released re-written qualification rules nor indeed given a reason for the delay.