'Cycling has no future': Bardiani boss Reverberi considers closing team after missing chance at Giro wildcard

Bruno Reverberi has said Bardiani CSF 7 Saber could close within two years, claiming the UCI’s ranking system has left teams like his with no future in professional cycling.

The Italian ProTeam finished 31st in the UCI team ranking this season, too low to secure a wildcard for the 2027 Giro d’Italia, the race the team is built around. Reverberi, whose family has run the team for more than four decades, told the TriCiclo Podcast that the outfit had already started preparing for an exit.

“Our project is to stop,” Reverberi said. “How can you spend €5 million and not have the right to race? There is no future, and cycling has no future. We have already thought about closing in two years. In fact, we have taken four or five new riders and made them sign for only one year.”

He said the uncertainty had made it impossible to go back to sponsors. “You don’t even have the courage to go to the sponsor and ask for money. We had a project with young riders, and they cut it out automatically.”

Reverberi’s team has raced every edition of the Giro bar one since it was founded as Termolan in 1982. The exception came in 2009, when the squad was not invited to the centenary Giro as Emanuele Sella tested positive for EPO shortly after his hat-trick of stage wins in 2008.

Bardiani have long been known for putting riders in breakaways at the Giro. Their last stage win at the race came in 2016, when a young Giulio Ciccone won in Sestola, and Reverberi says the team has not had a top-three finish since. He blames the chase for points, which he believes now encourages riders to stay in the bunch rather than attack.

“Our way of racing was to break away,” he said. “Now you don’t even break away, because you try to keep the rider there to sprint for tenth place for those damned UCI points.”

Reverberi argued that Continental teams are better placed to survive. He said a Continental squad costs around €600,000 to €700,000 a year, roughly a tenth of Bardiani’s budget, because riders can be signed for as little as €300 without the same social contributions.

“I would immediately remove all the Professional teams, which makes no sense, and give the Continental teams the chance to do what we are doing now,” he said. “So based on sporting merit, you can do the Giro d’Italia.”

He was equally critical of the governing body’s priorities, accusing it of serving the interests of the biggest race organisers and spending its time on equipment rules rather than the health of the sport.

“The UCI is incompetent. They’ve destroyed cycling,” Reverberi said. “But can you see that the UCI has to decide what bike you have to race with? Can you go and check the size of socks? Can you compete in cycling without radios at the World Championships?”

The UCI recently confirmed that from 2027, points from world championships in track, mountain bike, cyclo-cross and gravel will count towards the road team ranking, the first time results from other disciplines have been added to the system that decides licences and invitations.

Reverberi said the sport’s success at the top masks problems further down. “We’ve reached a bit of a peak with Pogačar in some ways, but everything is falling apart underneath,” he said. “Cycling is disappearing, and nobody’s looking at it.”