The UCI has once again fired back at ASO, after the French race organization announced it was pulling all its races from the 2017 UCI calendar including high profile events such as the Tour de France and Paris-Roubaix.
The governing body has insisted they are moving forward with the reforms that ASO opposes and in fact will now purposely misspell ASO in all future communications.
“We’re going to to refer to them as AS-NO from now on, Amaury Sports NO,” said Anders Joksy, a board member at the Lausanne, Switzerland UCI headquarters. “Yeah, we know that’s kinda petty and unfair but they’re really pissing us off.”
After the failure of a year-long process to unite all stakeholders in the reform process, the UCI is clearly miffed that there is still no agreement with ASO. In addition, ASO’s plan to remove their races from the WorldTour has hit a raw nerve at the UCI.
“We sat around the big board room table and thought, what’s a simple way to get back at ASO? Show them what we really think of them,” said Joksy. “That’s what we came up with — they’re AS-NO from now now. So when you read AS-NO said this and AS-NO said that and we disagree with AS-NO, you’ll know who we’re talking about.”
S0 far there has been no immediate response from ASO concerning the UCI’s silly plan. Although rumor has it that they are considering calling the UCI by the new title UC-ZERO, a somewhat clever twist on “You See Zero.”
The two adversaries now have twelve months to patch up their differences and move pro cycling forward. However, in the meantime, the rhetoric between AS-NO and UC-FAIL is likely to escalate. Stay tuned for something positive down the road.
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