ProTour finalizes agreements with grand tours

procycling | Tours enter ProTour reluctantly

Organizers of the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia, and the Vuelta a España have agreed to be part of the 2005 ProTour, guaranteeing the new tour's teams entry in all three events, and 8 others run by the grand tour organizers.

Representatives of all three races still have reservations about the new system, and have asked UCI president Hein Verbruggen for changes before the 2006 ProTour.

The three major tour organisations, ASO (Tour), RCS (Giro) and Unipublic (Vuelta), restate in their letter to Verbruggen that they still want to see the development of an ethical code, the introduction of some form of promotion/relegation format for the ProTour and a written understanding about TV, image and other rights relating to events.