UCI agrees. World Tour opens its doors to the Tre Valli

The Tre Valli Varesine has achieved what all of the fans were hoping for. The Unione Cycliste International (UCI) today agreed to the request made by the organisers (the Alfredo Binda Cycling Club) to include the Varese race in the World Tour, the biggest cycling circuit in the world, from 2017.

This final sprint, to use a sporting term, will allow the Tre Valli to gather on the starting line the 20 most important teams in the world, in accordance with the regulations, and with them, also more champions than have passed through Varese in the last five years.

Just to give an idea; there are very few World Tour races, in Italy: the two stage races, the Giro d’Italia and the Tyrrhenian-Adriatic, and the two Italian classics, namely the Milan-Sanremo and the Giro di Lombardia. It must be stressed that all of them are organised by one of the most important promoters in the world, RCS Sport, a brand connected with the newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport.

“I can only say we’re extremely happy because, over the last few years, our staff and all of our members have worked particularly hard on the Tre Valli,” said “Binda” owner, Renzo Oldani. “The UCI has complimented us and declared that the 2016 race, planned for 27 September, will be the official test for becoming part of the World Tour.”

As was explained some time ago, on passing the request hurdle, the Binda team will now have to give a series of economic, as well as technical and sporting, guarantees, but the latter should be no problem, as the club already organised the 2008 World Tour. Basically, a World Tour Tre Valli could cost nearly twice the current race: the budget will therefore rise from about €200,000 to €400,000. “Now, it doesn’t depend only on us,” Oldani explained, “because, in order to afford the expense, we have to rely on the whole territory. But for this reason, we’re open to every kind of collaboration. Having a race of this level would be fantastic, Let’s do everything to achieve it.”