“The International Cycling Union (UCI) today signed an important sponsorship contract with the Belgian company Rocky Roads Network,” the UCI said when they announced their new three-year mountain bike World Cup title sponsorship deal in september 2011.
One forum thread here at Singletrack was titled “Anyone heard of Rocky Roads Network – new UCI World Cup sponsor?” and users were sceptical about the new deal.
It turned out they had a reason to be.
UCI have now announced they’re looking for a new title sponsor from this season onwards, with a press release stating they won’t continue their contract with Rocky Roads – two years prior to when the deal was set to end.
The Rocky Roads website, which was claimed to be visited by more than 200,000 unique visitors a day, has not been updated in three months.
“Discussions are already under way with other parties with a view to different partnership packages including naming rights, on-site visibility and promotional opportunities across the disciplines XCO, DHI and XCE,” the UCI said.
Meanwhile, long-standing presenting sponsor Shimano have committed to sponsor the World Cup for another four years.
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get in there singletrack…..
UCI takes a year and a half to realise what should have been obvious on day 1. They should stick to what they’re good at, drugs in road cycling.
Good old UCI – why be bad at one aspect of your “core business” when you can be bad at all of them?
There’s nothing like being smug is there, no mountain bikers have ever been suspected or tested positive for drugs have they?
fair play to shimano. the sport is their business but they spend their cash well.
Speaker2animals,
You mean this smugness?
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/enduro-rider-caught-doping
Who’s being smug Speakers? Not talking about road vs mtb, just about the UCI’s incompetence in running their sport.
Best UCI news of the last year was when they decided not to get into enduro racing and mess it up too. Not that they did that for a good reason, they were just too useless to get their act together enough to ruin it. But hey, any hole’s a goal.