“JOIN US !”
RCS Sport, organizers of the Giro d’Italia, revealed the name of the applicant teams for an invitation to the 2014 edition. If Androni Giocattoli – member of MPCC – is already invited after winning the Italian Cup in 2013, eight other members of MPCC apply for a wild card : Bardiani -CSF Valvole , MTN- Qhubeka , Colombia, Novo Nordisk , Wanty – Groupe Gobert, NetApp – Endura , IAM Cycling and Caja Rural. Only two non- member teams to date, United HealthCare and Yellow Fluo, new team of the former team Vini Fantini-Selle Italia, has been added to the list.
In 2013, all the invitations to join the Tour de France and the Vuelta were awarded to teams members of MPCC. The Giro was the only one to invite a Continental Pro team, Vini Fantini-Selle Italia, non-member of MPCC. And this team had suffered two positive controls on the race with Mauro Santambrogio and Danilo di Luca. Before the start of the race, Roger Legeay, President of MPCC, alerted RCS Sport : “I wrote to the organizers of the Giro who invited three teams members of MPCC and one that was not. Unfortunately, the very serious problem came from the team that was not !” MPCC reminds the organizers “they also have the right and duty to make cycling being credible”, and invited United HealthCare Team to join.
About Vini Fantini, MPCC contacted in january 2012 RCS Sport, the Giro d’Italia’s organizer, after it had invited this team, which wasn’t a member of the MPCC. We told them it would be “logical” that all the teams invited on the “grands tours” follow the same rules. RCS Sport then urged Vini Fantini’s manager Angelo Citracca to join MPCC, and Citracca answered it would be done “as soon as possible”. Eleven months later, this team still hasn’t submitted any explicit request. It is also invited to join MPCC.