From today, the professional women’s peloton should have been riding long straight roads through the desert before Kirsten Wild smashed all-comers and won the opening stage of the Tour of Qatar. History suggests she’d have gone on to win the general classification, as she’s already the record-holder with four overall wins and six points titles out of eight editions.

Sadly, Wild and her colleagues have been denied the pleasure after the ASO’s December announcement that sponsor problems had led to the cancellation of what had become a key race on the women’s calendar.

Of the Tour’s major partners, Rayyan Water is still involved in grassroots cycling development through the Qatar Chain Reaction Cycling Association, but it also sponsors tennis and golf tournaments, while Q-Auto agreed a big sponsorship package for the Worlds.

With one central location as a race base, great hotel accomodation, good organisation and a tough week of racing, it was the ideal warm weather build-up to the European season. The event had also been promoted to World Tour status, meaning its disappearance is more than a frustration.

But … the thought that the Tour of Qatar (for the men, too) was somehow always a prelude to getting the World Championships to the gulf has come to the fore in recent months. That event was heavily criticised for its siting in the 2016 calendar and the weather problems that affected it, and how much worse might it have been even earlier in the autumn? The lack of roadside spectators was consistently pointed out – but that issue was always noticeable while never impacting on the racing.

It would be understandable if the Qatari authorities decided they’d had enough criticism and pulled the plug.

Added to this, the horrific incident involving Norwegian junior World’s medallist Susanne Andersen and a Qatari police officer suggested that there are still cultural barriers to overcome, even if the women appeared to have been able to race the Tour since 2009 with little reported overt prejudice.

The Qatari mission to establish the State as a major sports venue has been achieved with IAAF Athletics Worlds coming in 2019 and then the FIFA World Cup in 2022. Cycling may just the casualty that falls by the wayside.