Two races in two different countries, both within a week of each other, have been axed from the UCI schedule this week: the Sachsen Tour and the Surbida a Urkiola.
The Sachsen Tour, typically a five day stage race in Germany's eastern German province of Saxony, was set to run from the 21st to the 25th of July, but race organizers were not able to find a replacement title sponsor when Sparkasse stepped down from the top step after the 2009 edition, which was won by new ISD signee, Patrik Sinkewitz.
Race president, Lorenz Franzisti, was not sure about the race's future in 2011 either: "We don't have a Plan B in our pocket, so we have to develop some new ideas to generate new sponsors. The Sachsen Tour is anchored in the people and the province of Saxony, so we hope we can win the sympathy of the people and the businesses back."
The race began in 1985 as an amateur race, but rapidly rose to prominence as a testing race for riders not taking part in the Tour de France. The race celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2009, hopefully it will be back in the near future to begin work on its next quarter century.
2000 km to the southwest in the Basque Country of Spain, Durango to be exact, the long running Subida Urkiola will be taking the year off in 2010. The organizers cited financial difficulties as well in the cancellation of one of Spain's oldest and most traditional races. The race was run for the first time in 1931, but only ran haphazardly for the next 63 years. In 1984, it became a stalwart on the calendar and ran without interruption until this year. The difficult one-day race has seen many prestigious victors including Andy Hampsten, Pedro Delgado, Claudio Chiappucci, Tony Rominger, Jose Maria Jimenez, and most recently, Euskaltel's Igor Anton in 2009.
The president of the race's organizing committee, Juan Mari Bali, was sad to report the news, but cites a crisis situation in the economy, which has prevented the race from meeting the budget necessary to dispute the race.
"Due to cuts in sponsorships, some of them cutting back completely, and an inability to find new ones, in the current climat, we cannot cover the budget, so we have decided to suspend the next edition of the Urkiola Igoera [Basque name for the race]."
The Subida a Urkiola was scheduled for August 1st, the day after the Basque Country's premiere one day race, the Clasica San Sebastian.