Many smaller French races will be celebrating a happier Christmas this year having received the news that the cost of policing will no longer be rising by more than five times next year, according to feltet.dk. A deposition made up of French Cycling Federation (FFC) president David Lappartient, FDJ director sportif Marc Madiot and representative of Tour de France organiser ASO Pierre-Yves Thouault negotiated a far smaller increase at the French Interior Ministry yesterday.
As was reported earlier in the month, it was proposed by a government order in late October, which would see the current rate of €2.40 per hour, per gendarme, rise to an incredible €12.33. The rate will still go up next year, but the increase will be capped at 15% per year; the 2011 cost will therefore be €2.76, rising to €3.17 in 2011.
"It went well,” Madiot explained to French sportspaper l’Equipe. The Ministry was open to listening to the problem. We got to show that there would be a threat to French bicycle races. The increase is something that all races can afford without compromising safety.”
While races like the Tour de France would potentially have been able to absorb the massive increase, although take a serious dent in profits, smaller races would have been faced with extinction. Jean-François Pescheux, the Tour’s technical director, was quoted in l’Equipe last month, declaring that even races as big as Paris-Roubaix and the Critérium du Dauphiné would be at risk; Claude Faye-Mendy, the organiser of the 2.1-ranked Tour de Limousin predicted that his own race would go out of business after the 2011 edition.
While it currently sits in 14th place in the World rankings, with its best individual rider Bbox Bouygues Telecom’s Thomas Voeckler in 41st place, and has just one team in the sports top division in 2011, France plays host to many of cycling’s biggest and best races.
While the International Cycling Union (UCI) is keen for the sport to grow in its emerging markets of the Americas, Australasia and Asia, it is unlikely to want it to die out in its heartland.