It's Racing, But Not As We Know It

Velon, a company formed jointly by WorldTour teams, has muscled its way onto the pro calendar with a new kind of race series called Hammer. Cyclist finds out what it’s all about.

- Pete Muir

As a sport, cycling is about as traditional as it gets. Many of the biggest races have been around for a century or more – the Tour, Giro and all the Monuments are over 100 years old – and the way the sport is run hasn’t changed much either. The UCI (itself over 100 years old) and the big race organisers decide who gets to race, where and when. The teams do what they’re told. They’re at the back of the queue when the rights and revenues from the races are being shared out, and instead rely on sponsorship to stay afloat.

It’s a precarious business model, and is the reason for Velon. A few years ago, 11 WorldTour teams, including Sky, BMC and Quick-Step, got together to create a company that would use the collective power of cycling’s biggest stars to offer something different and give the teams a bigger stake in how the sport is run. Yet that doesn’t mean Velon is involved in some sort of cycling power grab, according to its CEO, Graham Bartlett.

‘It’s related to economics, but it’s not about trying to gang up and take something from somebody else,’ he says. ‘It’s positive. We wanted to come together to offer something that wasn’t already there, adding value.’