OUTERLINE News & Analysis: 2026 Race Calendar, Lazkano Case, Wiggins’ Book, and Industry Shifts

As the 2025 season draws to a close, The Outer Line takes a step back to examine the shifting dynamics shaping professional cycling — and how they reflect broader trends across the global sports industry. In this week’s edition of AIRmail: Analysis, Insight, and Reflections, we explore key developments that will define the road ahead: from a reshaped 2026 race calendar and the high-profile suspension of Oier Lazkano, to the latest controversies stirred by Bradley Wiggins’ new book and the evolving business of sports broadcasting. We also look at Rapha’s new direction with USA Cycling and the growing influence of figures like FIFA’s Gianni Infantino beyond their traditional sporting roles. Together, these stories highlight how cycling continues to navigate the intersecting forces of governance, economics, and culture that drive modern sport.

Analysis, Insight, and Reflections from The Outer Line.

# Catch up on pro cycling – and its context within the broader world of sports – with AIRmail … Analysis, Insight and Reflections from The Outer Line. You can subscribe to AIRmail here, and check out The Outer Line’s extensive library of articles on the governance and economics of cycling here. #

Key Takeaways:

● Looking at Next Year’s Calendar

● The Lazkano Case, and Its Possible Implications

● New Wiggins Book Stirs Up Old Controversies

● Infantino: FIFA Boss or Global Diplomat Wannabe?

● Continuing Shuffle of TV Sports Coverage

● Rapha Teams Up with USA Cycling

With this season’s racing now wrapped up, it’s timely to take a glance at the broader 2026 road cycling calendar. Many pundits (including us) have long argued that the schedule creates too many conflicts, but it’s still somewhat shocking to see the Tour de Suisse, one of the sport’s marquee one-week stage races, reduced to just five days in 2026. Traditionally, Suisse offered eight days or more of high-level racing in a mountainous setting just weeks before the Tour de France, making it an essential preparation ground for GC contenders. This significant reduction may convince the top favorites to instead commit to ASO’s Critérium du Dauphiné (to be rebranded as the Tour Auvergne–Rhône-Alpes in 2026) for their final Tour tune-up. This retreat from Suisse, one of the few remaining independent stage races, highlights the increasingly difficult landscape for events outside the control of cycling’s three dominant organizers: ASO (Tour de France, Vuelta a España, Paris-Roubaix), RCS Sport (Giro d’Italia, Milano–Sanremo), and Flanders Classics (Tour of Flanders). The trend points toward continued consolidation and contraction as these major players strengthen their grip on the calendar and make life ever more challenging for independent races that might threaten their comfortable market positions.

The mystery surrounding the near-complete disappearance of Red Bull–BORA–Hansgrohe’s transfer, Oier Lazkano, was finally solved late last week, when the UCI announced his provisional suspension over “unexplained abnormalities” in his Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) from 2022–2024. Lazkano had emerged as an unexpected Classics star for Movistar in 2023 and 2024 before failing to appear in a race since Paris–Roubaix in April. While there have been a few recent cases of the UCI using the ABP to sanction riders, this is by far the highest-profile suspension under the program since Roman Kreuziger’s case in 2015. And Kreuziger’s successful appeal of that suspension makes it even more notable that the UCI chose the ABP route – rather than using the biological data to trigger a more straightforward positive test, to pursue a case against a rider of Lazkano’s caliber. The decision to proceed based solely on ABP abnormalities underscores just how confident the UCI and its independent ABP Expert Panel (a group of hematologists and physiologists) must be that Lazkano’s values are not the result of natural variation.

While the UCI may be willing to risk a protracted legal battle with Lazkano in the name of sporting fairness, one reason it may have gone out on a limb here is that, under the new promotion/relegation system, the stakes of sporting fraud have risen sharply. Losing a doped rider no longer just means missed results; it can also mean the potential relegation or collapse of an entire organization. If Lazkano (who insists he is innocent) is ultimately found guilty, that raises uncomfortable questions about Movistar’s position in the three-year promotion/relegation standings. UCI rules clearly state that the results and points of a rider found guilty of doping must be stripped, but it’s unclear how the governing body will handle infractions that reach back several years. If Lazkano’s ABP violations date to 2022, one full licensing cycle has already passed, and it wouldn’t be possible to retroactively demote a team or promote another. In effect, Movistar could retain the UCI points he earned while doped, having potentially avoided a lower ranking simply due to the long time window involved.

Beyond the team implications, this case sends a important signal: Lazkano’s suspension demonstrates that the governing bodies are monitoring blood and hormone profiles more closely than ever, and that even subtle manipulations, no matter how sophisticated, are increasingly detectable and punishable. The UCI may have historically shown little appetite for taking on top riders in ABP-based cases, but that appears to be changing. Major questions remain about how Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s vetting process could have overlooked critical rider biometric data, and why the UCI wouldn’t have informed the team about the ongoing investigation as it prepared to invest millions of Euros in the rider. Nonetheless, this would seem to be a promising development for the integrity of the sport.

Bookending this week’s doping news, an anonymous survey conducted by U.K. Anti-Doping has found that one in five athletes at the 2022 Commonwealth Games admitted to using performance enhancing drugs. These results cast serious doubt on the credibility of claims by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which has reported that less than one percent of its almost 30,000 doping samples collected annually have shown positive drug tests. This represents a pretty wide disparity, thought WADA insisted that there is “a range of tools used to estimate the prevalence of doping in sport,” and warned against “reading too much into any specific survey.”

Bradley Wiggins’ new book, entitled The Chain, has rattled the cycling world over the last week, particularly with various allegations that point toward Team Ineos (previously Sky) and its former management structure. Cycling fans will remember the so-called “Jiffy-gate” scandal, in which suspected performance enhancing drugs were dispatched, allegedly to Wiggins, from the team’s headquarters in a Jiffy bag to France, as he was finishing the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine. Wiggins says that he wasn’t even involved in the Jiffy bag controversy; it was intended for someone else, whose name “will eventually come out.” He maintains that he always rode clean, and that the financial shenanigans within the team were even more convoluted and underhanded than its famously suspected “marginal gains” programs to enhance racer performance. For example, because of a cap on his coach Shane Sutton’s government salary, Wiggins says that team principal Dave Brailsford hatched a scheme to pay Wiggins an extra 200,000 pounds, which Wiggins would then turn around and pay Sutton in “coaching fees.” Wiggins says that the events of the 2012 racing season defined him – effectively destroying his life, his marriage, and his mental health. “Thirteen years later, I have finally defined myself.”

An interesting recent story by Sports Politika questioned the growing international political presence of FIFA boss Gianni Infantino. One day he is in the White House praising President Donald Trump, and providing him with a ceremonial red card to punish those who get out of line. The next day he is appearing with various world presidents on the stage at the Gaza Peace Summit. One could reasonably ask where he finds the time to actually manage and oversee the world’s largest and most popular sport, when he seems to be so omnipresent and busy conducting global diplomacy. But “Infantino’s diplomacy is not the diplomacy of treaties and compromises. It is the diplomacy of branding and spectacle. Where others see conflict, he sees opportunity….. Infantino’s legacy as a peacemaker may not lie in ending wars, but in redefining what “peace” means. In his world, peace is not justice, reconciliation, or equality. Peace is a good broadcast deal and a viral PR moment.”

Continued aggregation of broadcast giants into channel “monoliths” has demonstrated the key role sports media licensing plays in the entertainment M&A valuation landscape. Warner Bros. Discovery rejected a buyout offer from Skydance last week that could have created one of the largest broadcasting entities on the planet, merging it with Paramount. WBD’s CEO is apparently using this as a strategy to push up current stock value and buy time to address the company’s debt. The sports broadcast rights at stake are not insignificant, with WBD holding exclusive 2032 Olympic rights for the European market, English Premier League rights, and others including a wide swath of the UCI’s WorldTour. Paramount is even more heavily invested in sports to sway viewers, including an exclusive $7.7 billion deal with the UFC, NFL, NCAA Football and Basketball, and the PGA including the Masters golf tournament.

Sports have become on of the most important levers for profitability and consumer mindshare in the marketplace for nearly every product placement and advertising campaign. But could a merger ultimately push cycling’s content off of its critical streaming access point? In rejecting the Skydance offer, WBD has doubled-down on cutting costs to reduce debt, including 1000 layoffs last week and broad cancellation of movies and other entertainment holdings that were unprofitable. As we learned when GCN+ was unceremoniously dumped, cycling is not at the top of WBD’s priorities. A Paramount merger is no guarantee for cycling’s streaming continuity, either; shedding of duplicate services and unnecessary niche offerings would be likely should a larger Skydance buyout offer go through. Still, the WorldTour rights might be snapped up for a bargain in the aftermath – perhaps by an intrepid streaming partner willing to reinvest in and improve the content quality, consumer experience, and grow the fan base beyond the UCI’s current reach.

High-end apparel company Rapha announced a couple of week ago that it was discontinuing its long relationship with Team EF Education First, and initiating a new collaboration with USA Cycling. Rapha’s CEO Fran Millar said the relationship with EF had “gotten tired,” adding “we wanted to build a broader portfolio that spoke to a new and different demographic of the sport in a way that we haven’t done before.” The company (now owned by Walton heirs Steuart and Tom Walton) said it had also posted its eighth straight annual financial loss – almost 16 million pounds last year on revenues of almost 100 million pounds. However, the company claims a razor-thin positive EBITDA, and its CFO commented that it was now coming off of its “discounting drug” – charging full price in more instances. Rapha will provide the kit for USA Cycling’s racers through 2029, including the 2028 Olympics, which Millar says could provide the boost for American cycling that the 2012 Olympics did for British cycling. Millar also took a parting shot at EF saying that the team’s skinsuit for was last tested in 2022. “That’s an anathema to me.” Given U.S. riders’ successes in World Championship and Olympic track events in recent editions, the move could prove fruitful and see the iconic brand back on the podium and at the forefront of the performance cycling kit market.