Perspectives on One Cycling range widely, from a bold attempt to reform and modernize road bike racing into a 21st century sport to a cynical campaign to sportswash a cruel and repressive petrostate and maybe take over pro cycling in the process. But until last week, what no one really knew was whether the project was alive or dead. It turns out it’s neither.
It should be dead after the UCI’s withering statement rejecting the project’s inclusion in the 2026 men’s and women’s WorldTour calendars, and likely beyond, as the UCI Management Committee also largely set the calendars for 2027 and 2028. But in classic UCI form, the organization’s press release was worded vaguely enough that there’s a sliver of hope left for One Cycling’s backers.
After slamming One Cycling as “incompatible with the governance and regulatory framework of the UCI as well as lacking sporting coherence,” the governing body in its very next sentence pledged its wish “to continue discussions of this project in order to collaborate on the internationalization of the … WorldTour calendars and the economic development of our sport.”
Chris Marshall-Bell
Predictably, One Cycling’s backers claim the project is still on track. “We always knew [2026] would be tight,” a source connected with One Cycling told Escape Collective contributor Chris Marshall-Bell last week, speaking of the original goal. “Maybe 2027 is more feasible at the moment.” And thus is One Cycling’s Schrödingerian state revealed: neither alive nor dead, but in fact undead.
The Riding Dead
One Cycling is a zombie in the most basic way possible: it does not know it is a zombie. Like the Walkers from The Walking Dead, One Cycling appears not to feel pain, as when an arm is cut off or, say, a governing body of an Olympic sport plunges a sword of derision straight into its chest. That kind of blithe obliviousness is perhaps the only thing that can explain the backers' sanguine reaction to the UCI's statement last week.
“The project keeps going on and we know that Rome wasn’t built in a day,” was the breezy verdict one source delivered to Escape. Correct, but Wednesday will mark 20 months since Reuters first broke news of the One Cycling project. The big win for over a year and a half of work? The UCI is “speaking openly about One Cycling, which wouldn’t have been possible even 12 months ago,” said one source. Speaking openly? Why, what a huge win! At this rate of progress the studio will certainly greenlight a sequel: One Cycling, 28 Years Later.
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