Europe holds its breath as cycling takes to the high ground

After some early skirmishes in the Saudi desert and the Antipodean sun, the tainted sport of pro-cycling arrives back in mainland Europe this month. Many will have lost patience, but the crisis-riven sport has undergone a massive transformation in the off-season, and even if you remain cynical about its ethics - and a healthy scepticism is probably wise - you'd have to admit that its landscape has been forced to radically change.

Let's start by asking a question which will shed some light on the massive recent upheavals in the sport of pro-cycling: What do Danilo DiLuca, Gilberto Simoni and Paolo Savoldelli all have in common? Well, apart from being Italian cyclists who between them have won five out of the last six editions of the Giro D'Italia, none of them will be riding for a top flight UCI Pro Tour team this season.

They join the likes of Christophe Moreau, Magnus Backstedt, David Millar, Tom Danielson and Sergei Gonchar in dropping a division to ride for smaller professional teams with no automatic rights of entry into the big races.

With the three Grand Tours and most of the one day 'monuments' that matter all having dropped out of the UCI's unfortunate and expensive miscarriage, will their decisions to tune in and drop out even matter? I'm inclined to think not. What this new order in pro-cycling reveals is just how much the Pro Tour had became a costly irrelevance, a revenue-driven juggernaut recklessly powering its way around Europe.