PUTRAJAYA – Malaysian National Cycling Federation president Datuk Abu Samah Wahab has voiced concern that Le Tour de Langkawi could be dropped from the International Cycling Union’s (UCI) calendar next year.
Besides that, the race could lose its ProSeries status, making it more difficult to attract UCI world teams to participate.
This is all due to the bad reputation that has been accumulated by the race due to unpaid debts believed to be in the region of RM2 million.
Abu Samah said that five teams from last year’s edition lodged a report with UCI because they have not received appearance fees as promised.
Last year’s race was organised by Human Voyage Sdn Bhd and Abu Samah said that the private entity still owes more than RM1 million in appearance fees to teams.
“Last year’s race ran smoothly. But problems arose between teams and the organiser of last year’s race which have not been resolved.
“The biggest issue is the appearance fees owed to the teams. If those aren’t settled, UCI may remove LTdL from next year’s calendar.
“This is because teams will ask what is the guarantee that what happened previously won’t repeat. So we are hopeful that this can be resolved,” he said after a press conference at the launch of LTdL 2023.
However, the prize money worth RM850,000 has been settled for all winners.
For the record, the National Sports Council has taken over the organisation of this year’s race.
Human Voyage was given a three-year contract to organise LTdL from 2019 until 2021 and it was extended until last year after the 2021 edition was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Abu Samah added that he has tried to contact Human Voyage by phone, but no one picked up and their offices seem empty.
There is a solution though. Human Voyage still has not claimed RM1.1 million and RM400,000 in bond money from the Youth and Sports Ministry.
Abu Samah wants the money to be held from being released to Human Voyage and paid straight to teams that have made the claims. – The Vibes, July 4, 2023
