UCI World Tour Promotion and Relegation Weekly


An update on the promotion and relegation standings with Lotto-Soudal closing in on that crucial 18th place while Israel are making emergency mid-season signings to help win points.

What’s Changed Since Last Week?

  • Alpecin-Deceuninck and Arkéa-Samsic are in line for promotion, Lotto-Soudal and Israel-PremierTech face relegation
  • Lotto-Soudal and TotalEnergies stand get the automatic invites to the grand tours next year
  • Top scorers were Ineos, Bahrain and DSM, followed by Intermarché and BikeExchange-Jayco
  • Low scorers were Arkéa-Samsic and B&B Hotels on zero, Alpecin-Deceuninck got three points. Among others Israel got five, Cofidis 23 and Movistar 40

Zooming in on the relegation battle Israel had another flat week while Lotto-Soudal’s win in the Tour of Leuven thanks to Victor Campenaerts banked another 125 points, and they’re now 659 points off 18th place. They’d managed to climb to 18th in July, briefly overhaulling BikeExchange, but since then the Aussies have bounded clear since leaving the Belgian team now chasing Movistar.

Cofidis are performing à la Guillaume Martin, zagging and zigging when others zig and zag. Having began the season in 19th place and climbed up to 15th by the summer, they are now stalling and slip to 17th after being been leapfrogged by EF Education First and BikeExchange. Martin himself will be a crucial rider, he’s their top scorer but has already clocked 60 days of racing this season, they really need Bryan Coquard to start placing.

Elsewhere Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert keep winning, this time Lorenzo Rota took the Sazka Tour (Sazka is the Czech lottery, now you know) and they’re Belgian’s top team this season, at least when measured by UCI points and are over a thousand points clear of Quick-Step in this year’s haul, who’d have predicted this at the start of the year?

A couple of other points, Israel-PremierTech have signed Dylan Teuns (pushing out Guy Sagiv to make room) but to repeat a point made in another post, he doesn’t bring any points with him, his count for Israel is reset to zero. So he’ll have to score big. Just to make Israel’s top-10 he needs 124 points to surpass Omer Goldstein, and then he’ll have to keep going as there’s almost a thousand points to reach 18th place today. Beating relegation now is looking very hard but an intermediate goal can be to surpass TotalEnergies and claim the automatic invitations to the grand tours for next year because while promotion/relegation is based on a three year system of 2020-2022, these invitation are on the previous season’s performance only which makes sense as a reward for a decent team rather than inviting an outfit that was strong way back.

All this is spicing up the results from now until the end of the season. And beyond… with David Gaudu mentioning in his recent Tour de France Twitch stream that while Groupama-FDJ is well clear and safe, there’s already talk of starting the next promotion/relegation cycle of 2023-2025 on the front foot and trying to score points next year so that they’re not stressed come 2025.

Animated bar chart race

Background info
If you’re new to the story of promotion and relegation this year and want it explained then click here.

To see how many points are available in each race or category, click here.

51 thoughts on “UCI World Tour Promotion and Relegation Weekly”

  1. Thanks for the weekly update! This again will be an important week in what seems to be a season-end which only consists of important weeks for purposes of this relegation battle.
    2.1 Tour de l’Ain with Total Energies, LTS, Movistar, Cofidis and EF – all with important top 10 riders present – will be a nice head to head for relatively limited points. (Wellens restarting quite quickly after COVID – I assume to take away pressure off (and assist) fringe top 10 LTS riders Moniquet and Vanhoucke & in form Piccolo opening his account with EF)
    1.PRO Circuit Franco Belge with Total Energies, Israel, LTS, Cofidis and DSM present (Ewan appears to be on the starting list of the organizations website – this could have a big impact if true, although this race might come too quickly after surgery, it would be hopeful that he is back to competitive racing so quickly).
    2.PRO Arctic Race of Norway with Israel, Cofidis, Bike Exchange and DSM with not a lot of other teams challenging for GC with many point up for grabs.
    1.1 La Polynormande to finish the week off with Total Energies, Israel, LTS, Cofidis

    A lot of head to head battles going on. With Movistar only participating in Tour de L’ain starting with only Sosa and Pedrero as current top 10 riders, I would think that this is a key week for Israel and LTS to start catching up.

    • Even forgot about the European Championships road race (Senior) this sunday which goes hand in hand with a nice points haul and have important riders of Total Energies, Israel, Movistar, DSM and Cofidis starting.

    • In Polynormande, De Lie got 40 points and Gilbert 3. Martin got 60 for Cofidis (Thomas 3). Biermans 35 for Israel but he is not in the top 10. For the rest no relegation points.

      Much more relegation points in Norway
      – Israel did well in GC: 150 points for 2nd place Houle and 40 points for Hagen (with 202 season points in top 10). The 25 for Neilands (now 125 season points so just outside top 10) could still have an impact if he takes points in other races.
      – Cofidis also did very well with Zingle (100) and Lafay 85, plus their stage points.
      – For BikeExchange, Schultz only took 15 points and Colleoni 5

  2. Looking forward, and of the promotion/relegation teams, provisional start lists for tthe Vuelta suggest Movistar (Valverde, Mas & Verona) and BEX (Yates & Groves) could score well while IPT and Lotto-Soudal don’t appear to hold many decent cards. After that things really will be desperate with Bretagne Classic, the Canadian races, and the final Italian races leading to Lombardy to save the day. In almost all the above some climbing ability will be required favouring again Movistar and BEX, maybe EF too. Exciting days ahead, and nailbiting ones for some teams!

    • True.

      De Buyst seems to be their sprinter, althouh he is not in the top 10 yet (but only 57 points behind). Or will they go for Barbero in his home country?

      De Gendt, Moniquet, Van Gils, Vanhoucke and Cras all have the potential to score good in a breakaway. They also have the potential to score 20th-40th in GC, but that only brings in 20-40 points.

      Cras was 20th last year and could go for top 15 this season maybe?

  3. Lotto i think actually passed BEX before the tdf and briefly got into the top 18. Which i guess also highlights how much better BEX has done since the TDF started passing a few teams and almost putting themselves in the safe zone.
    Plus moviestar have been abysmal since the start of May. In some of the races its seems hard to understand how they even have as many points as they do. It feels like they have nobody who can finish high just at this point in time.

  4. Interesting that while the European championships carry plenty of points, last weekend’s Commonwealth Games carried none. Impey’s 2nd place could have been quite helpful to IPT.

    • Commonwealth Games is a venue of random* independent (New Zealand or Canada) and not sovereign countries (England or Scotland) and territories (Isle of Man or Jersey) so it could not be part any official international competition system. Those countries and competitors would gain advantage in UCI point system, if they can get benefits and extra points from an above national, under continental system.
      * of course I know, it is not just random selection

      • It’s just labelled a “regional games” and sits outside the points system. There are confederation events like the Oceania champs or the upcoming Euro championships; Impey could have done the African champs in March.

        • Mediterranean and Southeast Asian Games sit outside the ranking system too. As the competitors have to miss out on other conflicting races in order to compete with these, there’s not really an unfair advantage if they’re awarded a similar level of points as a national championship.

          A cynic might suggest that they’re outside the points system because they’re organised by sporting bodies outside the UCI’s control, and the UCI would rather divert competitors to races under its supervision.

          • The Commonwealth Games, just like the Olympic Games, aren’t outside of the UCI system though.

            A boneheaded UCI commissaire proved this by issuing a 200 CHF fine to a NZ rider who did not attend her medal ceremony because she was sitting in the call-up seat for her next race.

      • Yes, but it is a race which carries kudos in certain quarters, just like national championships. The start list of these is also a random historical accident: national borders are just where the fighting happened to stop…

        • And no less arbitrary than some of the restrictions on entries to various UCI categories of races. A team in a European cross-border metropolitan area can’t enter their local 1.2 race if it’s the wrong side of a dotted line.

          Commonwealth Games and other Regional Games should be scored as 1.1 races.

        • As races that are restricted to only riders from some countries go, you can only start in one national race and one continental race.

          If random other such races are allowed to be scored points at, (groups of) countries where cycling is very popular could set up all sorts of silly artificial “Games” to get an unfair advantage over riders from other countries where cycling isn’t popular enough to sustain that.

  5. Wellens is leaving Lotto S for UAE so, is this a result of the Lotto S predicament or did UAE come with more money (though the inticement of a guaranteed WT team next year might have saved UAE some dirham).
    As David Gaudu mentioned next year, is this same rather peculiar system to be repeated for the next 3 years?

    • Wellens apparently wanted to leave anyway. I like him as a rider and a human but it began to look like his time was up at the team and a change would be a good idea.

      UAE’s an odd choice, good for him but unusual for the team as with Soler, Hirschi etc they have several riders good at dynamiting early season races, not to mention McNulty and Ayuso who’ll take their chances in February-April as well so it’ll be interesting to see what role he does.

      And yes, the same system will begin again in 2023-2024-2025 although a lot can happen, will we still have the same 18 WT teams on the eve of the 2026 season? Will the rules change? The points scale? For now the working assumption is it begins again anyway.

  6. They should follow the Aussie style (in reverse) and have a finals series between the bottom teams, who fight for the right to stay up or go up. It’d have suspense, drama, give TV time to lower teams and be a ratings winner!

  8. I feel I ought to know this, and probably did before my old brain got overheated…
    but why will Lotto and Total Energies, rather than Lotto and IPT, get the GC invites when IPT are above TE at the mo?

    • Everyone asks this. It’s because promotion and relegation is based on 3 years of rankings, but the invites to next year’s race depend only on this year’s rankings where the best two ProTeam (the second tier ones) are invited. And if a team is relegated, they automatically qualify as a ProTeam and get ranked alongside.

      I will do some kind of promotion and relegation FAQ soon.

  9. Sorry for the daft question, but why do “Lotto-Soudal and TotalEnergies stand get the automatic invites to the grand tours next year” noting that Israel are above Total in the rankings?

  11. I’m assuming Israel’s goal is going to be overhauling Total rather than avoiding relegation altogether. It’s a much more realistic goal, and since their sponsor isn’t going anywhere, relegation wouldn’t be the end of the team. In fact, being out of WT might be an advantage to them (just like it was to Alpecin) in that they could pick and choose which races to enter. It would also give them time to develop a team identity, something they don’t really seem to have at the moment. Signing Teuns seems to be a signal that they’ve realized they can’t put all of their eggs in a single Froome shaped basket…

    • Israel-Premier Tech at Arctic Race of Norway have at last said they’re going for all possible points from now until the bitter end. Houle pointed out that they’re lucky in having Adams as backer even if they get relegated.

  12. An excellent day for L-S at Circuit Franco-Belge (even if they arguably botched the finish) with around 300 points, and a good day for TotalEnergies with 210. Not such a good day for IPT.

    And Kristoff just keeps on going. He obviously still has a fair bit of fire in the belly.

    • I think LS only gets 195 as De Buyst’s and Van Moer’s points won’t matter as they are not top-10 in team. Still a good day and gets them about 400 points behind Movistar.

      I didn’t think they messed up the finish. Did what they could unless you thought they should have been all in for De Lie? De Buyst was cooked.

      • You’re right, I’d assumed De Buyst was top 10 for them. It makes sense that he would go all in for Campenaerts to win, though if he hadn’t led out the final foursome then either Van Gestel or Kristoff might have been forced to burn a match a tiny bit earlier. In any event, Campenaerts definitely should have ridden through the line and not sat up when Kristoff passed him. Second was his, though this mistake only cost the team 25 points.

        I guess Ewan is gearing up to peak a bit later, with this race being a bit of a tune up.

        • Riders that aren’t top-10 now can enter top-10 later, and then the points would suddenly count (while someone else’s point would be dropped), so it might still be valuable in the end.

          • Indeed. Jasper De Buyst now has 171 points. Vanhoucke (+57) or Vermeersch (+87) could certainly still fall out of the top 10 at the end of the season. Van Moer probably won’t make the cut anymore though.

            Rider Points
            DE LIE Arnaud 1460
            WELLENS Tim 748
            CAMPENAERTS Victor 607
            EWAN Caleb 406
            GILBERT Philippe 369
            CRAS Steff 350
            VAN GILS Maxim 314
            KRON Andreas 311
            VERMEERSCH Florian 258
            VANHOUCKE Harm 228

      • Kristoff did say that if Campenaerts had started his sprint later he would have won, but chapeau to Kristoff for hanging in there on the uphill finish.

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