AIGLE, Switzerland (BRAIN)—The UCI has delayed its new labeling program for race frames and forks until early February.
The program, first announced in early December, went into effect on Jan. 1, but after a two-day meeting with industry suppliers last week raised questions about the process, the UCI pushed the implementation back for at least a month.
On its website, the UCI said a revised version of the approval protocol for frames and forks would be published at the beginning of February. The number of approval requests required that several measures in the initial protocol need to adapted, the posting said.
Engineers and executives from about two-dozen bike brands attended the two-day meeting on Jan. 13 and 14 hoping to gain more insight into concerns over the program’s cost—approximately $12,000 per frame approved—and the three-month maximum timeline for approvals.
After the gathering, Julien Carron, the UCI’s technicalogical coordinator, sent a letter to attendees announcing that the procedure would be modified due to “the pertinence of the questions, remarks and propositions that came up.”
The program is the first time the UCI has worked directly with the industry to eliminate any race-day controversy over whether bikes meet UCI regulations. The idea is to have concepts and prototypes approved before production, and issue a “UCI approved” sticker to be affixed on the bike.
Not up to speed on the UCI’s new approval process? Click on the link above to read BRAIN’s previous story detailing the procedure as announced late last month.
—Nicole Formosa
nformosa@bicycleretailer.com
