The RadioShack team has been added to a revised list of teams invited to the Giro di Lombardia, according to la Gazzetta dello Sport; the American team was originally omitted from the list of 25 teams, issued last week. None of the original invitees has had its invitation withdrawn, so there will be 26 teams on the start line on October 16th.
RadioShack initially threatened to take its case to the Court for Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to try to force the race organiser RCS Sport to issue an invitation; rumours then began to circulate that one had originally been issued but was lost in the post.
The addition of a 26th team to the list does create some problems for the race organiser though; specifically it could find itself falling foul of the International Cycling Union (UCI) rule 2.2.002 which states that the peloton must not exceed 200 riders.
Usually, a race like the Giro di Lombardia would have 8 riders per team, but this would mean a 208-strong peloton. Rule 2.2.003 says that a race may set the number of riders per team anywhere between 4 and 10 – other than ProTour events where it must be 8, or 7 if agreed with the ProTour council in advance. As the Giro di Lombardia is a “Historic” race it is not subject to ProTour regulations but may decide to set the number of riders per team to 7.
This would appear to be the only solution to the problem, as each team must be allowed to field the same number of riders; there would be no way to cut one rider from selected teams to reduce the total to 200, for example. Rule 2.2.006 states that: “should the number of riders entered in a team race exceed the number of participants admitted to that race, the number of participants per team shall be reduced to a number that will be equal for all teams.”
With 7 riders per team, the peloton would be made up of 182 riders, considerably smaller than usual. As it would be well short of the 200 maximum there would be the potential to invite a further two teams, like ProTour team Footon-Servetto, although this would be highly unlikely.
The only other way to reduce the peloton to below 200, while allowing each team the usual 8 riders each would be to withdraw the invitation from one or more of them; this may well happen if there were to be a serious doping scandal between now and October 16th.
Failing this, there will be one more team car, but 18 fewer riders than usual in this year’s race of the falling leaves.