Iranian rider Amir Zargari. (Photo courtesy of Benjamin Weaver)
The scramble for points moves on from the Islamic Republic.
By Joe Lindsey
Last year, pro cycling teams had a keen interest in riders from an unlikely talent-development pool: Iran.
Two teams in the fight for points signed top riders off of the UCI Asia Tour; Lotto Belisol picked up Mehdi Sohrabi and Ag2r courted Amir Zargari.
Neither rider is young enough—Sohrabi is 32, Zargari 33—to be a genuine development project, making both of them curious recruitment choices for their respective teams. At the time, I wrote that the test of pro cycling’s interest in the Islamic Republic would be whether the teams who signed these riders showed any real desire to use them for more than a warm set of UCI points on the roster.
Today, the results don’t look encouraging.
As Barry Ryan reports in an excellent piece for Cyclingnews, both Sohrabi and Zargari look to be at the end of their stints on the WorldTour and headed home.
Both riders raced light schedules for their teams by WorldTour standards. Zargari did about 30 days of racing and last donned a race number in August, at the Tour du Limousin. Sohrabi had a longer season, finishing up at the recent Tour of Beijing and racing about 50 days.
But even that level was higher than what both riders raced on the Asia Tour, according to Cycling Quotient's stats (which cover only UCI-rated races). Sohrabi told Ryan at Beijing that he had trouble adjusting to the European peloton’s size (which is typically 50 percent larger than continental fields) and the narrow roads.
Visa problems can also be an issue, as the paperwork involved with getting an Iranian citizen a work permit outside of that country can take months. But it’s telling as well that neither Ag2r nor Lotto signed the riders to more than single-year contracts.
Last year, Ag2r was on the bubble for WorldTour inclusion, which made it scramble for points. This year, it’s one of the top 15 teams on sporting criteria. Its biggest loss for 2013 is captain Nicholas Roche. Instead of focusing on WorldTour riders with points, it’s locked up several of the top points-scorers from the UCI Europe Tour, including Samuel Dumoulin, Domenico Pozzovivo, and Carlos Betancur.
Lotto is on the bubble, in the group of five teams battling for three WorldTour spots, as is Saxo Bank. Those teams are taking different approaches. Lotto has virtually no roster movements that I know of for 2013 aside from the departure of Sohrabi. Saxo, by contrast, has been active, jettisoning recognizable riders who scored few points (Nick Nuyens, Dani Navarro) and picking up riders with points. Unlike Ag2r, Saxo is focusing on WorldTour-points-getters like Roman Kreuziger (189 points); Daniele Bennati (74 points); Roche (63 points); Matti Breschel (60 points); and UCI Americas Tour leader Rory Sutherland.
Regardless of the tactic, teams appear to be steering clear of the Asia Tour that was such a hot area last year (exception: Italian Andrea Guardini, a top performer on the circuit with Farnese Vini, signed with Astana for 2013). The Iranian experiment appears to be over, to the detriment of young riders there hoping to move up.
Teams and riders have complained that the UCI’s points formula is opaque and distortive, leading teams to chase riders solely for their points rather than identifying talent they want to develop, and leaving even veteran, proven domestiques vulnerable to being cut regardless of how good they are at their jobs.
Sohrabi and Zargari didn’t get a long enough ride to show whether they could adapt to the WorldTour. But their experience is a key piece of evidence that the teams’ and riders’ complaints may have merit.
The UCI has been neck-deep in the Lance Armstrong fallout, including its own behavior in that era; but as Sohrabi and Zargari depart for home, it’s worth asking if the ranking system needs an overhaul as much as other aspects of the UCI.
