Garmin-Sharp manager encourages continuing team licences.

Following Katusha's belated entrance to the WorldTour, Garmin-Sharp Team Manager, Jonathan Vaughters, told Cyclingnews.com that the decision by the UCI to include 19 teams in cycling's top group for 2013 was "the only solution" given the fact that the season is already well under way.

In the long-term, though, Vaughters said that the current situation necessitates a fundamental change in the regulations governing right of entry to the WorldTour to steer clear of future incidents like the drawn out tale over the Katusha team.

"If you think about it, doing anything else mid-season - if they [the UCI] had pulled out another team, that team was going to appeal to CAS as well and then they would have had to pull another team, and it would just have gone round and round," said Vaughters. "It's just not reasonable to do it any other way."

Looking farther ahead, Vaughters commented, "My personal position is that this selection procedure should not be a yearly process. This process needs to occur once. There need to be more permanent franchises in cycling. Cycling suffers from constant upheaval and that puts it on the back foot. You need to take on these battles once and then it's done. Have it reviewed after that at certain junctures for sure, but it can't be a year-to-year process."