The early-season UCI calendar could have a big gap in 2025 with Tour Colombia currently fighting to continue the event amid budget constraints.

Tour Colombia (2025-2-4-9) is expected to overlap with Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana (2-5-9), but the Spanish stage race could face cancellation in 2025 after a terrible flood in the region last month, killing hundreds of people and disrupting the logistics of the race. Property and infrastructure, including much of the base material, were devastated.

If both Valencia and Colombia are cancelled, the only European men's stage race currently on the UCI calendar will be the Etoile de Bessege in France, and the Herald Sun Tour will also be held in Australia.

Cyclingnews understands that a definitive verdict on whether the tour Colombia will take place has not yet been taken. The dramatic cuts in public funding, the currently inactive website, and media coverage of pleas for its continued survival have encouraged little omens.

El Tiempo recently reported that the Colombian Ministry of Sports, which provides vital support for Tour Colombia, suffered a 2025 global budget cut of 66%. The ministry's budget will decrease from 1,3,000 trillion Colombian pesos (about 32,800 dollars) to 4,640 billion dollars (about 14,500 dollars). The cost of competition to government coffers is estimated to be about 70 billion Colombian pesos by El Tiempo. 

Tour Colombia was a very popular event among riders, teams and fans. In the past editions of the 2.1 race, Mark Cavendish (Astana-Kazakhstan)'s height figures made his season debut by selecting Tour Colombia, where Cavendish won the stage last year. Other top international names that have participated in the past few years include Chris Froome (Israel Premier Tech), Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-QuickStep), Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers), Nairo Quintana (Movistar) and Rigoberto Urán (EF Education-EasyPost).

However, according to El Tiempo, the Peloton's most severely affected members by the possibility of cancellation were members of the local Colombian Squad and the other major South American race, the Vuelta a San Juan, ended after the 2023 edition. The highest-ranked race in Colombia forms an almost unique chance for the country's teams to fight with some of the top names in the sport.

"We need to give U23 riders the opportunity to race and Tour Colombia is a great opportunity," Raul Mesa, whose Nu team won the race with Rodrigo Contreras last year, told the newspaper.

"We race on home terrain against major names, it gives our riders a great opportunity to know what it's like to participate in these kinds of events. If that doesn't happen, it really hits us hard.

"It's terrible news to lose the opportunity to race this level in this country," Luis Cely, sports director of GW ShimO Shimano, another Colombian continental team,

"Riders who can't go to Europe are considered the best in tour Colombia." The potential loss of Tour Colombia may contribute to a short but noticeable shortage of races in the early season calendar caused by other external circumstances, as there is an opportunity to fight and the competition has a chance for sponsors to invest and profit from the investment "

.

Top Colombian riders like Nairo Quintana (Movistar), well known for his social activities, were not slow to react to the potential crisis to the country's sport created by the impending massive budget cuts. During the ceremony last week, when he received the "Order of Democracy Simon Bolivar" medal, an honor awarded by the State of Colombia to citizens performing outstanding service to the country, Quintana made the most of the high-profile opportunity to offer some pointed criticism recently.

Quintana, who won the 2019 Tour Colombian stage and 2018 overall 2nd place, did not directly mention the stage race during his speech to the country's parliament. Instead, he took a broader perspective.

"This big cut for athletes and the Ministry of Sports - here, no one has heard anything, no one knows anything, no one talks about it," he said, "The people here can see so many difficult situations for our country, so I asked them to think about us." We recommend that you do so. We athletes are facing massive cuts."

Tour Colombia, which is the latest revived version of the country's national stage race, which began in 2018 but ended in 2020, then came back only for a new edition in 2024, after the pandemic. But this year's race was in a much more uncertain situation for the sport in general than it was when COVID-19 first brought it to a halt.

As Cyclingnews reported before the start of this year's race, the 2021-2023 3-year suspension was due to a lack of funding, which had prevented the Colombian Cycling Federation from reviving it. 

The return in 2024 was too late to convince many world tour teams to change the program early in the season, and it was in decline at a time when their previous high profile in Colombian sport was growing thanks to Egan Bernal's victory at the 2019 Tour de France. It was.

The current ambition of Tour Colombia in 2024 to provide a foothold for future editions still exists, at least on paper. But as weeks go by towards a definitive decision on its viability, those hopes are thought to be painfully lacking.