UCI suffers painful legal defeat as SRAM wins gear restriction appeal

The UCI’s attempt to defend its controversial maximum gearing test has failed in Brussels, with the Market Court rejecting the governing body’s appeal against the Belgian Competition Authority.

In a final ruling delivered on 20 May, the Court of Appeal in Brussels declared the UCI’s appeal admissible but unfounded, leaving in place the interim measures imposed last October. Those measures suspended the UCI’s Maximum Gear Ratio Test Protocol, which had been scheduled to be trialled at the 2025 Tour of Guangxi.

The ruling is a painful setback for the UCI, not because the court dismissed rider safety as a legitimate concern, but because it found serious problems with the way the governing body tried to turn that concern into a technical rule.

At the centre of the dispute is the proposed limit of 10.46 metres per pedal revolution, the equivalent of a 54x11 gear ratio. That rule would have had a direct impact on SRAM, whose RED AXS groupset is commonly raced in a 54x10 configuration.

SRAM argued that the protocol would place its equipment, its sponsored teams and its market position at a disadvantage. The Belgian Competition Authority accepted that argument on a provisional basis in October, forcing the UCI to suspend the test only days before the Tour of Guangxi was due to begin. The UCI then appealed that decision.

The Market Court has now sided with the Belgian Competition Authority.

The judgment makes clear that the UCI is entitled to pursue safety objectives in professional cycling. However, it also states that a governing body cannot introduce technical standards with economic consequences without meeting basic requirements of transparency, objectivity, proportionality and non discrimination.

In the court’s view, the UCI failed to show that those conditions had been met.

In identifying those shortcomings, the judges focused on several parts of the UCI’s process: the limited involvement of equipment manufacturers, the uncertainty around how test events were selected and the lack of a sufficiently clear basis for choosing 54x11 as the limit. Just as importantly, the UCI had not convincingly shown why this specific restriction was necessary to achieve its stated safety objective.

That does not rule out gear limits altogether, nor does it prevent the UCI from continuing to study the relationship between gearing, speed and crashes. What the ruling does make clear is that the current protocol cannot be treated as a harmless experiment simply because it was presented as a test. 

It amended UCI regulations, carried sporting consequences for riders and teams and was capable of affecting the market for professional road groupsets. A rider presenting a non compliant bike could have been refused the start, giving the measure practical and immediate consequences.

SRAM’s position was also treated as distinct from that of its main competitors. Shimano and Campagnolo already offered setups that could comply with the proposed limit, while SRAM was identified as the only major supplier whose current top level road transmission would require adaptation. 

For SRAM sponsored teams, that created a real sporting and operational problem: modify equipment at short notice or risk being unable to start races covered by the test.

The potential damage, the court accepted, was serious, difficult to repair and not limited to SRAM alone. Reputation was part of that concern. If the protocol had gone ahead, SRAM equipment risked being perceived as unsafe or unsuitable for use in the professional peloton, even though the underlying question of whether 54x10 gearing increased crash risk had not been established.

The case had already created political tension inside cycling. Earlier this year, Cyclingnews first reported that the UCI intended to use money from SafeR, the sport’s joint safety project funded by riders, teams, organisers and the governing body, to support its legal action. That raised the prospect of SRAM sponsored teams indirectly helping to finance a case against one of their own technical partners.

The dispute also drew criticism from inside the sport. Visma | Lease a Bike manager Richard Plugge questioned the value of the Guangxi test in an interview with Domestique last year, arguing that the process was not sufficiently scientific. 

EF Education-EasyPost CEO Jonathan Vaughters was even more pointed after the original BCA decision, suggesting the UCI should prioritise more obvious race safety risks, such as vehicles on course, dangerous road furniture and motorbikes in the peloton, before focusing on gear restrictions.

The wider consequence for the UCI is procedural as much as sporting. Any future equipment measure with a direct market impact will need to rest on clearer evidence, broader consultation and a more precise explanation of why the chosen restriction is proportionate.

The UCI was ordered to pay costs, including a procedural indemnity to the Belgian Competition Authority.

For SRAM, the ruling is a major legal and strategic victory. The company has argued from the outset that it was not trying to block safety initiatives, but that any rule with such a direct impact on one supplier had to be developed through a fairer and more transparent process.

For the UCI, the defeat is more uncomfortable. The court has now drawn a clear line between pursuing safety and imposing rules without sufficient process.

A gear limit could still return in another form. This version, and this process, has now been stopped.