The UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) has today approved the establishment of price caps for track cycling equipment at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games.
The UCI management committee announced the decision as part of a press release today after meeting for its third ordinary session of the year at the World Road Championships in Kigali, Rwanda.
Until now, nations competing on the track have been required to register the equipment they use with the UCI ahead of the Olympics and use the equipment in competition several months beforehand. These rules came into play ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Those rules were designed to level the playing field to a degree, so a nation couldn’t turn up to the Olympic Games with a new product that might offer a dramatic competitive advantage, or a prototype that hadn’t been sufficiently safety tested.
However, the existing registration rules don’t take cost and pricing into account. For a long time now, components used by nations on the track have had to be commercially available, so that, in theory, anyone could order a certain frame or set of handlebars used by another nation, for example, if they had the cash. Article 1.3.006 in the UCI Technical Regulations states, “Upon expiry of the authorised prototype period (12 months), the equipment must be commercially available.”
In reality, the rules allow nations and federations that produce their own bikes (a key difference from private road trade teams with sponsorship…
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