Shifting power balances: cyclists, race organisers, team owners and regulating bodies

This chapter explains how and why the current organisational structure of professional cycling emerged and why specific tensions and contests of strength around specific issues erupted. The sport’s most prestigious competition(s) - the Tour de France, the Giro D ‘Italia, the ‘monuments’, - and other competitions with perhaps lower levels of prestige and status, continue to be owned and controlled by commercial organisations rather than the national or international governing bodies for the sport. This structure has largely endured since the early twentieth century despite elimination contests, advancing integration, the increasing differentiation of social functions and the formation of larger units of integration. This in turn has facilitated the development of more multipolar power relations yet race organisers retain considerable power chances.