What is the principle ?
On the road, we run all year round across the planet. The International Cycling Union has 340 days of racing (in the Men’s Elite category, the pros) for the 2022 season, which started in October 2021 and ends this weekend with the Veneto Classic, the Chrono des Nations and the Japan Cup. The international calendar is organized into divisions (World Tour, Pro Series, continental circuits).
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Teams have access to the different events according to their own status. At the top of the hierarchy, the “World Teams” are automatically registered for the World Tour events: the Grand Tours, the Monuments and certain stage events (Paris-Nice, Tirreno, Poland, etc.) and one-day races (Het Nieuwsblad, Strade Bianche, Bretagne Classic…). The other teams may be invited by the organizers or qualify, under certain conditions.
To join the elite division, you have to meet the UCI’s requirements on various criteria (finances, ethics, etc.). “The 18 highest ranked teams in the [classement mondial UCI sur 3 ans]among the teams having applied for a UCI WorldTour licence, are deemed to satisfy the sporting criterion”, specifies the regulation.
The “race for points” therefore corresponds to the need to defend one’s place among the best teams in the world according to the scale established by the UCI. Once the licenses have been awarded, a new three-year cycle opens up until the next upswings and potential relegations.
How to score points?
By winning events, by climbing on the podiums, by wearing the leader’s jersey, by shining in the secondary classifications, by making places of honor, or even places at all. The UCI has established a vast scale according to the classification of events within the international calendar.
The most credited race is the Tour de France: Jonas Vingegaard brought 1,000 points to the Jumbo-Visma with his overall victory. You have to add 120 points per stage victory, as much for the polka dot jersey or 25 points for each day in yellow.
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Points are awarded for the top 60 riders in Worlds and World Tour races, according to a scale that takes into account the prestige of the events. Class 2 races (the smallest division of continental circuits) and national championships are the least well endowed.
The final ranking is established by adding the world rankings at the end of each of the three seasons taken into account. Only the ten best riders of the team during each season are taken into account.
What does the peloton think?
The UCI reform has visibly left riders and managers speechless, since it took them a long time to grasp the subject. The new promotion and relegation system was announced at the end of 2018, as part of a wider overhaul of the calendar, and came into effect for the 2020 season. But it was in 2022 that the debates emerged, at the approaching the ax at the end of a first cycle of three seasons.
“Today we are six or seven teams having to run to score points, it’s madness“, launched the boss of the Movistar team, Eusebio Unzué, this summer. His counterpart from EF Education, Jonathan Vaughters, went one step further by speaking of the “stay or die“.
Also concerned by the points race, Bryan Coquard and Cofidis were also bothered by the last Vuelta: “Winning a stage on the Vuelta (100 pts) earns less than on Cholet-Pays de Loire or Tourangelle (125 pts)“. The scale, which values one-day races over stages, is one of the most criticized elements of the reform.
Bryan Coquard
Credit: Getty Images
Others, notably within a BikeExchange team hit by bouts of bad luck from Simon Yates, regretted that their place in the elite was threatened in the midst of a pandemic, with all the impact that Covid-19 had on the calendar and the participation of the runners. In a quickly deleted tweet, Tao Geoghegan Hart (whose Ineos Grenadiers team has never had anything to fear) appealed to the “solidarity” of the peloton faced with the application of the promotion/relegation system, which some teams have considered challenging in court.
The echoes are very different among the second division teams aspiring to the rise. Sponsor of the Norwegian team Uno-X, Vegar Kulset illustrated this cycling interpersonality: “Imagine a Premier League club who, at the end of the season and approaching relegation, complain that the system is unfair because of injuries and Covid. And the last argument: we are a historic club and we don’t deserve this.”
Who will go up and down?
There are still a handful of events to be contested and informed followers know that the UCI can still make some minor corrections to its rankings, but the trends of the last three years cannot be reversed. With 2,000 points behind 18th place, Israel Premier Tech has been doomed since last month. Lotto Soudal maintained a little more hope, without success.
Unsurprisingly, the first promotion goes to Alpecin-Deceuninck. With victories in the biggest events in the world, Mathieu van der Poel’s band will finish in the top 10 of the ranking over three years (8th before the last events). “It doesn’t change much in terms of the calendar, but it’s normal for us and our partners to want to be part of the elite.“, explains manager Christoph Roodhooft.
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In 18th place, the Bretons of Arkea Samsic are waiting for the last races to celebrate the climb, but the calculations of sports director Yvon Caër (and the performance of the riders, even without the Tour de Quintana) will bear fruit. The French team has just over 1,000 points over Lotto Soudal.
However, the Belgian team is not condemned to anonymity. Among the teams that will not be in the World Tour next year, it is the one that has signed the best 2022 season in the world rankings, ahead of TotalEnergies. UCI regulations provide that these two teams are automatically invited to all World Tour events in 2023 (it is up to them to participate or not). Israel Premier Tech follows them in the standings and will therefore be invited to the one-day races of the World Tour. For other events, it will depend on the organizers.
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