Just a few days ahead of the presidential election, the UCI has taken the next step in a major reform of professional cycling. The Professional Cycling Council has agreed to submit a number of drastic proposals to the UCI Management Committee. If approved, the new steps will significantly change professional cycling.

Following consultations in 2011 and 2012 and the big Deloitte UCI Stakeholder Consultation carried out earlier this year, the UCI is now ready to introduce significant modifications to the calendar and rules of professional cycling. Today the Professional Cycling Council (PCC) has agreed to submit several working group proposals to the UCI Management Committee which will make the final decision on whether to implement the changes.

If approved by Management Committee, the reforms will start to come into effect in 2015 and be completed by 2020, after a progressive implementation plan has been put in place.

The proposals include creating a First and Second Division, fewer riders in each team and fewer racing days each year for the riders. The current annual sporting assessment will be replaced by an automatic promotion/relegation mechanism and the season would be ideally scheduled to take place during a more compact period of the year (between February and October).  

Among the main principles, the races would be selected based on a number of criteria, including that they did not overlap; there would be with racing every weekend (in particular on Sundays) and there would be six weeks of continuous competition for the Spring classics .

Furthermore, the PCC exceptionally granted a request from the Giro d’Italia organizers for a third rest day immediately after the transfer from Ireland to Italy during the 2014 edition, and for the race to start on Friday.

A new rule has been introduced that prevents a rest day to be held until after the first week of racing and when next year's start in Ireland was introduced, organizers RCS Sport was confident that they would be able to handle the logistical challenges. However, that appears not to have been the case and so an exemption from the rules has been allowed.

Finally, the PCC approved the 2014 WorldTour calendar, which will see the season finish with the Tour of Beijing between October 10-14.