Rapha CEO Fran Millar says professional cycling “has been failed structurally and commercially” in a new foreword to The Rapha Roadmap, reissued today.
The cycling clothing company first released The Rapha Roadmap in 2019 as a “blueprint for professional cycling”, and it led to the creation of the Alternative Calendar for EF Pro Cycling and formed the basis of the Rapha Super-League initiative in the UK.
Rapha has reissued the plan, with a new foreword by Millar and introduction, because today marks the deadline for the UCI’s consultation on the future of professional road cycling.
The UCI launched the consultation in February to develop professional road cycling’s “long-term appeal”.
“Although cycling is now hugely popular across five continents, its media coverage and the revenues generated for its stakeholders do not yet fully reflect its potential,” the UCI said at the time.
Cycling’s international governing body said there has been several reforms in cycling that have helped to promote the development of the sport. But Millar’s foreword paints an alternate picture.
Millar was the CEO of Ineos Grenadiers (now Netcompany Ineos Cycling Team) and then Belstaff before joining Rapha in September 2024.
“What struck me most coming back to cycling after four years is not how much has changed, but how much hasn’t. When I left my role as CEO of the Ineos Grenadiers, the sport was debating reform. I returned to find the debate had gone backwards – and that is deeply depressing,” Millar writes in her foreword.
She adds that the issues with the sport in The Rapha Roadmap seven years ago “are the same problems” identified by the UCI’s consultation in 2026.
She says the sport has an “ineffectual governance system that often seems to prioritise self-preservation over growth”.
“The questions haven't changed. But the answers haven't been implemented. And the sport can no longer afford the delay. We are living through times of extreme and rapid societal and technological change. Sports that understood this early and built a content strategy, data infrastructure and interactive communities have grown. Sports that didn't have watched their audiences age, fragment and their commercial value stagnate,” she writes.
Millar further highlights the growth and popularity of the women’s professional sport. She says sports such as Women’s Super League and the Women’s Rugby World Cup show what was possible when the people running those sports stopped making excuses about audience size and “started making the content that grows one”.
“The time for endlessly debating and re-diagnosing the problem has passed. This consultation is an opportunity for action and change. I sincerely hope the UCI uses it this time,” Millar says.
Rapha worked with the original authors of the Roadmap, alongside cyclist and writer Joe Laverack, to review and update several of the proposal’s suggestions and recommendations.
These suggestions include moving the Women’s WorldTour to a closed-league system to aid economic predictability and long-term stability.
The Roadmap also suggests “equitable financial guardrails”, such as a spending cap, for the men’s WorldTour to counter “super teams”, which lead to a "competitive imbalance” with only certain teams dominating results.
You can read the updated proposals on Rapha’s website.
