Describing the moment as the ‘long awaited victory of the Katusha team,’ the Russian squad has hailed today’s Court of Arbitration for Sport decision granting it a WorldTour licence for the 2013 season and said that it considers justice to have been done.
Second in last year’s team rankings and victorious in the individual standings with Joaquim Rodriguez, Katusha was originally turned down for a WorldTour place by the UCI’s Licence Commission on June 10th. It appealed to CAS ten days later and now, after a long wait, the team has received the news that it will be part of the sport’s top league in 2013 after all.
“The CAS decision confirmed the validity and legality of the interests of Katusha Team and thereby confirmed the status of Katusha as a member of the World Tour 2013,” it said today.
The head of the Russian Global Cycling Project, President of the Russian cycling federation and UCI management committee member Igor Makarov proclaimed his satisfaction with the outcome. “We can confidently say that the whole world’s sports community followed the situation of Katusha Team during the last weeks. Katusha Team received a lot of sympathy and support out of different circles: sports officials and the trustees of the Russian Global Cycling Project as well as famous athletes, mass-media and fans,” he said.
“On behalf of both [the] Katusha Team and the whole Project I would like to express our deep gratefulness to all, who sincerely empathized, hoped and believed that the justice will be restored! This CAS decision is absolutely objective and justified. This proves once again the impartiality of the supreme juridical body of the world of sports.”
CAS said today that the full reasoning for its decision would be released in a few weeks, but the team will immediately return to WorldTour status.
The UCI has issued a limited response, saying that it will weigh up the matter before commenting at length.
“The UCI acknowledges the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decision to uphold the application of Katusha Management SA to be registered as a UCI ProTeam for the season 2013. The appeal to CAS followed the decision of the Licence Commission on December 7, 2012 denying the registration on the basis of the ethical criterion applicable to such registration,” it said in a statement.
“The UCI will now evaluate the consequences of this ruling and will communicate further in coming days, as soon as such evaluation has taken place.”
The governing body had previously said that if Katusha won the case, that it would remove another team from the WorldTour in order to keep the number of squads at eighteen. It is not yet clear if it still intends to pursue this course of action.
If it does, that could in theory open the door to a CAS appeal from whichever team is ejected.