The International Cycling Union announced its America Tour calendar and included a new event to take place in Costa Rica: The Costa Rica Tour

The event is scheduled for February 15 through the 19 next year and it was assigned with a category 2.2 the same as the classic “Vuelta a Costa Rica” that takes place every year in December, this year it falls between the 13 and 25 December.

The organizer of The Costa Rica Tour, RPMTV/Xtreme Family Entertainment made the formal request to the Costa Rican Cycling Federation (FECOCI for spanish ) to recognize the event as a 2.1 category, which means if approved that it will be the first and only professional cycling tour in Costa Rica and would only admit the participation of national squads and teams with continental license or ProTeam, (the same format that the San Luis Tour in Argentina has and that will not be ran in 2017), the FECOCI agreed and gave its backing elevating the request to the International Cycling Union (UCI in Spanish), however since this will be the first edition of the event it is automatically placed under an amateur category (2.2), but can change its status to professional (2.1) once the National Federation and the organizing company comply with a list of requirements and information related to the organization and logistics of the race, to guarantee minimum requirements of a professional race are being met.

According to Mr. William Corrales, president of the Costa Rican Cycling Federation, the formal necessary documentation was already presented and they are expecting a positive response in the next few days.

RPMTV has significant experience in organizing artistic and sports entertainment events in the country, which helps them in taking on the task of organizing what would be the first professional cycling event in the Central American and Caribbean region, including Mexico and Colombia. The FECOCI will act as a supervising agency to ensure that all technical and logistic aspects are of the level and quality established by the UCI.

RPMTV and FECOCI have already announced that if and when they receive the OK from the UCI for a 2.1 event they will extend an invitation to the Movistar Team of which Costa Rican Andrey Amador is part.

“It’s a fact that people want Andrey Amador competing in Costa Rica now that he is in the best moment of his career. That would be incredible for cycling fans and in general, watching their best representative competing and hopefully winning this Costa Rica Tour”, said Marco Echeverria, vice-president of FECOCI.

The idea is to have athletes of the level of Alberto Contador, Peter Sagan and Vincenzo Nibali.