Sean Kelly On Introducing A Transfer Fee To Cycling and The Giro In Ireland

Sean Kelly has expressed his disappointment with the Irish Tourism Board saying it’s a ‘Scandal’ how little effort is going into promoting the Giro in Ireland.

Speaking in Belgium earlier this week Sean Kelly said ‘It’s great to see the Giro coming to Ireland’ but feels a lot of the opportunities Ireland had to benefit from the arrival of cycling second biggest race have already slipped through their fingers. ‘Back in Ireland, we've heard almost nothing about [The Giro]. There's so little about it.’ ‘The exposure it’s getting and the promotion is very very poor’. ‘The tool is there.’ He says the Irish Tourism Board should be utilising Dan Martin, Nicholas Roche, Stephen Roche and himself and ‘It all should have been done already, over these past four or five months’. ‘It's going to be a long time before we get to host a big stage race again in Ireland.’ ‘I think it's a scandal that Tourism Ireland are not doing something.’ 

Kelly also discussed the idea of introducing a transfer fee system into the sport. Teams like his An Post – Chain Reaction Cycles, a continental team, are seen as a development team which means when a Pro Continental team or World Tour team come along and want to sign one of their riders the team loses a man from their roster and with that the riders performances, results, and funding so the smaller teams are the losers at the moment. This is‘for the health of cycling’ Kelly explains. ‘A fee of ‘50 or 75’000’ wouldn't impact on the larger teams but would make a huge difference to the likes of An Post.

It is something Kelly has aired in the UCI when he was on the road commission before himself, Stephen Roche and Michael Robb got ‘thrown out’ when the new president, Brian Cookson, came on board.’ ‘If you have a good continental team which is there for many years and who look after riders in the right way [you need to support that] because there’s a lot of teams who are “cowboy” teams they’re there for one or two years then they disappear, they don’t pay their riders the riders are left in the middle of the season or after two months with no team. ‘You look after a rider for a year or two years and then a pro team comes and they’re poaching him from you’ Kelly explained ‘If you go to a pro continental team there should be a fee if you go to a world tour team there should be a bigger fee'. The continental teams are ‘so important’ because they take riders on at a vital time in their development. The UCI have said they'd look into it but, as Kelly suggests, it isn't a priority and could be a while before we see this implemented.