A look at the standings this week, plus a look at the victory rankings to see how many wins teams have and which ones are still chasing a World Tour win.
Promotion
Lotto and Israel-PremierTech are still on course for promotion but so far neither is having a great season. Lotto in particular are not scoring many points, their haul this this season is comparable to Arkéa-B&B Hotels and TotalEnergies but have a good cushion from excellent 2023 and 2024 seasons.
If two teams move up then two must be relegated. This chart zooms in to show the teams above and below 18th place, indicated by the red line, in the three year rankings. As you can see XDS-Astana have scored 5,740 points this year, they’re now a good week’s racing away from scoring as many points as they did for the whole of 2024. The Kazakh team is now only 1,314 points behind Picnic-PostNL and at this rate it’s possible they catch by the end of the month.
Cofidis had a decent week in Itzulia Basque Country and the Scheldeprijs taking 461 points, while Picnic-PostNL got only 172 and the French team is now opening up a gap on the Dutch team.
This chart shows the progress across the season. XDS-Astana now pull out ahead of Uno-X. Arkéa-B&B had a good week thanks to Kévin Vaquelin winning the Région Pays de La Loire Tour (ex Circuit de la Sarthe) but they’re well behind. To repeat the point, they might be delighted to be relegated because it means the team exists next year, there’s a meeting due soon with Arkéa management while B&B Hotels ominously say it’s for team management to communicate the news, implying a decision has been taken.
As a wider observation the last three year cycle of 2020-2021-2022 saw more movement with teams surging then slipping, this time
Team victory rankings
Now let’s step away from the points scoring to look at the absolute number of wins. In the chart below you can see UAE Emirates top the table with 27 wins so far this season. In fact they’ve scored more World Tour wins the total of all wins for the next team Lidl-Trek.
João Almeida got two stages and the GC in the Itzulia Basque Country, his biggest stage race win to date. Interestingly on the final stage he was away with Enric Mas and certain of winning GC could have done a deal with Mas but refused, Almedia said the UAE team had been working so hard for him that no gifts were possible; it’s something we’ve heard before from the UAE team.
Look mid-table and XDS-Astana have had a great start to the season but just six wins, as many Arkéa-Samsic. The fate of the two teams tells us plenty with the Kazakh team often placing multiple riders in the top-10 while the French team has struggled.
Surprisingly Alpecin-Deceuninck come after these two teams and so serve as the exemplar for the quantity vs quality debate a leap in quality, indeed if Mathieu van der Poel was a team he’d be 14th in the UCI rankings this season, ahead of the likes of EF and Groupama-FDJ. But it does show the team’s reliance on Van der Poel. They’re looking for a replacement sponsor for Deceuninck, you’d think they’ll find one given they can ace the classics and with Philipsen win in the Tour de France but there’s no news yet and it’s getting late.
Groupama-FDJ are struggling with three wins, even the Coupe de France wins seem elusive. But Intermarché-Wanty are faring worse. Dion Smith won the modest Volta NXT in the Netherlands but they’ll take it as they’d been the last WorldTeam without a win until then.
Five teams are still without a World Tour win. Picnic and Groupama-FDJ had stage wins in the Vuelta last year; while Arkéa-B&B, Astana and Intermarché had wins in the Tour de France. Technically Arkéa have the longest spell without a World Tour given Vauquelin won Stage 2.
Conclusion
XDS-Astana’s plan is still on course. As we’ve seen above they haven’t won many races but score big by placing. Remaining in the World Tour isn’t certain but they’re close to doing all they can. Picnic-PostNL by contrast look in trouble, they’ve been particularly hit by injuries but Cofidis aren’t out of danger, far from it from a team prone to hiccups.
Thank you for this. Great article and a fascinating subplot to the season. I’m wondering whether teams in the battle will focus their teams away from the GTs to pick up ‘easier’ points elsewhere. I’m sure the Astana numbers man has made the calculation…
We’re almost at the point where stage races take over the calendar and the one day races recede. It’s not one or the other of course but this changes the points on offer until the one day races come back in the autumn.
Would like to work out how many points are on offer in the season in total and the distribution across the season but it’s a job to count up each race, each stage, the points for leading a stage per per day etc. But we’ve had a lot of the races this season already and with them a lot of points, especially if we deduct GC in the grand tours which Astana have said they’ll avoid, part of their plan is to deliberately find races without Pogačar, Roglič etc who will almost always take points leaving them with crumbs.
Job for an INRNG intern!
I have historically cheered against Astana given their checkered past but the ferocity at which they are racing in the early part of the season has provided me personally a great entertainment value.
Federov, Ballerini, and Teunissen have made them visible in the big cobbled races and I feel like the underdog status suits them.
UNO-X and Tudor have also been punching above their weight with established riders (Trentin, Kristoff) in tandem with relatively new rising stars (Hoelgaard, Pluimers, Wærenskjold) have made them very easy to cheer for as well. Abra has definitely become a fan favorite with his TDF performance last year but now appears to be a marked rider ala Tony Martin
Picnic look dead in the water, hard to see where the points come from. Cofidis might be less than comfortable, but I feel like their point farming doesn’t really ramp up until the summer. Astana appear to an absolute lock to save themselves, barring their performance suddenly falling off a cliff.
Exactly – and sadly – for Picnic. Jakobsen out, Degenkolb too, Poole not raced since Strade Bianchi, Bardet retiring… That doesn’t leave much. Onley has done quite well so far but won’t rival a top rider in a hard race and can’t keep the team afloat single handed.
If this season they were really counting on Bardet, Jakobsen and Dege to save themselves, it was really a daring call.
Lotto’s difficulty finding sponsorship could yet save Picnic.
If Lotto can’t put together an application which meets the financial criteria, their application will not go as far as looking into their position on the team rankings.
Whichever team finishes 19th on the 2023-25 WorldTour qualification ranking will therefore take the 18th place on the list of teams which have submitted valid applications.
But as inrng points about above, there are *two* teams currently below the line with a serious floating impulse, there’s Uno-X too. Cofidis looks motivated and well-equipped, among those above.
Intermarché another double question mark, points and sponsorship.
Another aspect noted above is that unlike Israel and Lotto, whomever barring Astana is falling out WT for any reason, sporting or finantial, won’t necessarily get the soft landing effect, as top scorers are going to be Astana and Uno-X if one or both don’t get promotion.
Yeah. And with the less-than-stellar way Lotto has been going recently they might not even end up high enough in the ranking to secure automatic invites next season. I wonder if this math maybe played a role in their merging with a CX team recently. If those CX’ers score some points in 1.1 & 2.1 summer races that go to Lotto it might make a difference in the bottom-line of the points-bookkeeping without affecting the accountancy bottom-line too much….
I’d add that what they really need is, like Astana, a serious strategy focussed on staying WT. To be seen if it’s what they want, but I’d guess yes, in their case.
Obviously, Astana’s got it easier because they probably talked very clearly with their athletes, especially the new ones. I’m aware that it’s not easy to just achieve what I suggest below if the riders aren’t on board. You can send them here or there, but if they don’t feel like racing hard for the “small” objective (points, placings), it’s no use. Motivation of athletes is paramount in cycling, of course.
However, even acknowledging that, Picnic looks like they haven’t a clear enough plan.
It’s (at least apparent) nonsense to have Barguil or Leemereize or Vermaerke or C. Hamilton racing high profile races where they barely hit a top 20, or a top 50, when they could collect points just placing (not speaking of winning which is too much of a random thing) in minor races.
Yet, maybe they’re holding them back betting for high scores in the stage racing part of the season. Dunno, but it doesn’t look great, and the above suggest it’s not mainly about bad luck.
They must hope big time for great results from Poole and Onley, who’re the ones with the potential to deliver.
They also probably didn’t programme very well the generational transition (the 26-29 prime years aren’t their internal peak of talent for sure), plus some market moves which look daring to say the least (Jakobsen, Barguil) or directly hard to understand (Bevin, Edmonson).
Gabriele makes a good point on Picnic’s age profile. They have some older riders who have been outstanding (Degenkolb, Bardet, Barguil…) and some younger riders who may become excellent (Bittner, Andresen, Poole, Onley…) but not much of note in the peak scoring middle. They really need a fit and healthy Jakobsen though that will require patience.
Some of the older riders are there partly for the reason of helping the younger riders along. They did bet the ranch (as in budget) on recruiting Jakobsen.
Poole and Onley could be diverted to help get them out of trouble but do they want to spend their time doing smaller stage races for points?
Eekhoff out too, the one who actually wins races.
Totally so, more relevant than the rest for their quest.
Also Astana travelling a lot to farm points- using cash from the new sponsor I guess. Difficult not to root for them when so many had already written them off. I suspect both Astana and UNO-x will get a world tour place. I guess the other question is what will happen to lotto- have they got money problems? Could that prevent them from accepting a world tour place?
Excellent point. I think it’s not unreasonable to question the fairness of point farming in far-off, expensive-to-attend races, but it’s clearly a great opportunity for those teams willing and able to do it. One could also argue that it’s better to have a World Tour where all the teams can afford to travel the globe to participate.
One of the arguments for points farming is that it encourages the WT teams to enter the smaller races, especially in far-away places. This makes it easier for these races to attract sponsors and TV/media coverage. Without the WT teams many of these smaller races would not be viable.
To be fair, if you’re a half-Kazakh, half-Chinese team, lots of the races are far-off and expensive to attend.
More about where your «service course» actually is/are based.
The team is legally run out of Luxembourg but these days run out Nice (close to Vinokourov’s home).
There’s going hunting for points but they’re also half Chinese now so the Tour of Hainan is a priority too.
As for Lotto, it’s a concern raised here before: they’ve lost a co-sponsor, they can’t afford to run a World Tour program this season and that’s with the one-off cash from selling Van Gils too so can they afford promotion next year? Something might have to give if they can’t find a co-sponsor.
Lotto are obviously in a very stressful situation. A renewed WT cycle isn’t guaranteed because of the sponsor issues despite the 3-year points tally being good and a renewed season of pick-your-races isn’t guaranteed because of this year’s points situation not looking great.
Many predicted that this points system would lead to teams not riding for victory but riding like Astana. Can’t say I see it as a positive.
Federov looked to be staying with the top riders at Paris-Roubaix until his puncture – that was infinitely more interesting to me than watching three Astana riders charging for three top-20 finishes.
We could have four teams vanishing at the end of the year : Arkéa (Hubert did a desperate call in today’s L’Equipe), TotalEnergie, Lotto and Intermarché. As for the french teams I’m not sure it’s a hard blow for french cycling, we tend to have more teams that we can afford. Sure, it would be disappointing because it’s some interesting teams with interesting stories (hope that Vendée U can survive anyway…). As for the belgian teams, it can become a big problem for belgian cycling, especially the Walloon part…
Everybody will say cycling model is broken if it happens, etc. But isn’t there too much teams of this high-Proteam low-WT profile ? Tudor, UnoX are beautiful projects, with solid sponsors. Tietema seems to be another client for the future. We can have a big change in the teams next year, whether it was a rather stable environment for few years.
It’s an interesting question re: the business model, but I agree with your assertion that there might be too many teams who struggle to compete in the World Tour. The teams that you cite as up-and-comers are currently much more interesting than the current strugglers. It would be sad for any team to dissolve, especially for any rider whose contract would be nullified, but it just seems to be the nature of the sport.
Of cycling anyway, where too much teams want to participate in the big races… Is it because, as opposed to what we read here often, the cycling business model is too efficient (or, more likely, the globalisation is doing its thing), the market is becoming too big for the existent races and too much sponsors want to participate for the size of the pie ? I really wonder what effects Onecycling will have on pro cycling. It seems to be a growing crisis : too many sponsors are also eager to participate in organising events… Will we have a double calendar, like boxing ? It really looks like the FISA/FOCA war in the late 70′ and early 80’s in F1. I’m not sure it’s the right path for hardcore cycling fans (yes, F1 is very big, but F1 before 1980 seemed more exciting), but I’m not sure we can avoid it.