world tour relegation standings

What is going on with relegation and UCI points and why does everyone care now?

We are moving past squeaky bum time and heading for the drop

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What's going on with relegation and UCI points?

Relegation from the WorldTour is back in the news, after bubbling away for most of this year in the background, we have almost reached the point of no return for some teams, with opportunities to gain points dwindling.

After the Vuelta a España - for which points do not get awarded until all racing is done - there are just three WorldTour events left this year, all one-day races, 15 .Pro races, 21 .1 races, and the World Championships.

That means 7,783 UCI points are still on offer for the winners of all these races, and the individual stages contained therein, plus thousands more for podium finishes and more minor placings. However, these are unlikely to go to the select few teams who need them most, those that are struggling at the bottom of the UCI's table. 

At present, both Lotto Soudal and Israel-Premier Tech, two current WorldTour teams, face relegation, while Alpecin-Deceuninck and Arkéa Samsic would be promoted to cycling's top table. Lotto can take comfort from the fact that, as things stand, they would still gain access to the Grand Tours next year, but Israel would not, with TotalEnergies occupying this second spot.

There are currently only 619 points between Movistar, BikeExchange, EF Education-EasyPost and Cofidis in the four spots above relegation; Movistar are 288 points ahead of Lotto Soudal, who currently are in the red zone.

Suddenly, things are looking awfully tight at the bottom, and both racing and non-racing decisions are affecting the rankings.

For example, Simon Yates' withdrawal from the Vuelta (because of Covid) has deprived his BikeExchange team of potentially hundreds of crucial points that they would stand to gain from a high finish on general classification.

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While the Australian team bounced back with a stage win on Wednesday, through Kaden Groves , the 100 points gained here will do little to quell fears of the drop.

With more and more riders dropping out of the Vuelta after catching the virus, in a year when illness has seemingly had more of an impact than usual, it is points that are being lost, not just results.

This was seemingly what Tao Geoghegan Hart (Ineos Grenadiers) was getting at in a hastily deleted tweet sent on Wednesday morning: "How can we have a relegation system, risking the future of decade old teams, during these unprecedented times of sickness. Sport is not fair, granted. But this just doesn’t seem right, not now and not like this. I would like to see solidarity between all riders, of all teams."

Solidarity is a tricky concept in the peloton, with the official union, the CPA, famously unloved, and little binding riders together across teams, nationalities, ages, goals and more. This is what made Geoghegan Hart's intervention interesting; his lack of dog in the fight, as Ineos are hardly one of those threatened with relegation.

What those in the teams striving for promotion to the top table, like Alpecin and Arkéa, make of this call for solidarity is a different matter. The relegation system might threaten the future of "decade old teams" but to not have a system would threaten new investment in the sport.

The boss of ProTeam Uno-X, Vegar Kulset, tweeted: "Imagine a Premier League club that, at the end of the season and close to relegation, complains that due to injuries and covid, the relegation system is unfair. And the final argument - we are an old club and do not deserve this."

Away from sickness, Arkéa's push to the WorldTour has been threatened by Nairo Quintana's positive test for tramadol at the Tour de France , which has deprived the French team of 400 UCI points after he was disqualified from the race. His sixth place therefore no longer exists. He has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, with the potential for court rulings affecting the final UCI points table.

There are squads who have reportedly asked their riders not to attend the World Championships in Australia in order to concentrate on gaining points at smaller races, while tactics to boost point totals - and possibly not risk everything by going for the win - are clear to see.

There are even reports that riders will leave the Vuelta early to target other races for UCI points, which seems to undermine the whole point of competition at the highest level; the system is leading to weird decisions.

As a sport, cycling often struggles to present an overarching narrative, especially to the casual viewer. Individual events mean a lot more than any kind of structure to the season - the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix and the World Championships are big events across the whole year - while any kind of structure is at best noticed at the end of the year, at worst ignored altogether.

To the casual viewer, as most are, any kind of thinking beyond a single race or a series of events like the cobbled Classics, is alien. Yet for many years there has been a unified attempt at some kind of system or league across the season, to link things up, to make Dwars door Vlaanderen connect with the Tour of Poland, or the UAE Tour with the GP de Quebec.

The current system for men’s cycling, devised by the UCI, the sport’s governing body, is the WorldTour, with the ProSeries sitting below it, the successors to the Super Prestige Pernod and UCI Road World Cup. There are 18 WorldTour teams, the ones you have heard of, and they get to automatically go to the WorldTour races, the ones you have heard of. Below that, there is the ProSeries, of 17 teams, which you have probably heard of, who go to races that you probably know, and sometimes, confusingly, to the races you definitely know. Below this again are Continental teams, who mostly go to the races you don’t really pay attention to.

Understand?

Since the inauguration of the WorldTour, 13 long seasons ago, there has been an end of season ranking, which is normally, rightfully, ignored; it is often either superfluous or odd (Tadej Pogačar and Deceuninck Quick-Step won last year).

Still, the ranking exists. 

This league table matters more than ever this year, because the 18 slots for teams who will form the WorldTour for the next three seasons are up for grabs. Some squads who are currently at the top table face relegation, while ProTeams below eye up their spots, and therefore automatic invites to the biggest races.

All races have UCI points and riders score points based on their finishing positions, this is how the league table is set, although it is only the top ten scorers in a team who actually contribute to the overall total. It is the points total across 2020, 2021 and 2022 that counts.

Points do not just go to winners, they go to top finishers, up to the top 25 in certain races.

If all of this is not confusing enough, different races have different points. You win 1,000 points for winning the Tour de France, for example - lucky Jumbo-Visma - and 125 points for winning the Volta Limburg Classic, as Arnaud de Lie did for Lotto Soudal.

There is one more layer of added complexity, which is that the two teams with the highest points total this year - and this year only - get invites to the Grand Tours for next year, and do not have to hope they get in through a wildcard.

All of this is why team decisions have appeared weird this year, as those squads in danger have become alert to the situation they have found themselves in and kicked into gear. Big name riders have been sent to smaller races to garner points, or multiple riders on one team have finished high up at an inconsequential event.

While the concept of relegation and promotion from the WorldTour makes sense, teams have been left scratching their heads at a system which sees more points awarded for victory in a 1.1 race - the Marcel Kint Classic for example - than a Grand Tour stage win.

Throw the chaos of real life into the mix, and a pandemic, plus the confusing points system, and it has been a messy year.

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Adam is Cycling Weekly ’s news editor – his greatest love is road racing but as long as he is cycling on tarmac, he's happy. Before joining Cycling Weekly he spent two years writing for Procycling, where he interviewed riders and wrote about racing. He's usually out and about on the roads of Bristol and its surrounds. Before cycling took over his professional life, he covered ecclesiastical matters at the world’s largest Anglican newspaper and politics at Business Insider. Don't ask how that is related to cycling.

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BREAKDOWN: Explaining the 2022 UCI Promotion/Relegation Standings

Breakdown: Breaking down exactly what is going on with the UCI’s new (and extremely confusing) promotion/relegation system and where things stand for the 2023 season. Which teams goes up and which go down and ‘is it all bad news?’ Maybe not.

– This article is an excerpt from the Beyond the Peloton newsletter. Sign up here for full access. –

With the 2022 pro cycling season winding down this week, the results of the UCI’s new promotion/relegation system are in. This, along with the somewhat odd and unfair rules of the system itself, has created plenty of chatter about who is being relegated from the WorldTour, and most importantly, what this actually means (spoiler: it’s complicated).

A bit of background on how we got here: Back in 2019, professional cycling’s governing body, the UCI, presumably tired of perennially bad teams squatting at the sport’s 18-team top level (the WorldTour), decided to implement a three-year-long promotion/relegation system that would tally every UCI point scored by professional teams between the 2020-2022 seasons. This tally would then allow them to designate the top 18 teams in this ranking as the WorldTour teams for the following three seasons (2023-2025) and demote the underperformers. In theory, this meant that the consistently poor performing teams would be relegated down to the second-division while overachieving teams would be elevated to the sport’s top flight.

While this could be a good system, in reality, the strange way UCI points are distributed (i.e. lower level regional races yield a high number of points while grand tours yield a small number of UCI points) and the lack of a viable second-division has caused an immense amount of (somewhat deserved) complaining, protests and potential legal challenges from the relegation-threatened teams.

Where Things Stand at the End of the 2022 Season

Even with a few races and UCI points still being up for grabs in 2022, we already have a very clear view of the implications of this first round of promotion/relegation since the gaps between the promoted and relegated teams are large enough to prevent any further shuffling in the standings.

As we can see in the graph below, the current WorldTour teams suffering relegation are Lotto-Soudal and Israel-Premier Tech while the teams who are currently second-division teams (aka ProTeams) being promoted are Alpecin-Deceuninck (formerly Alpecin-Fenix) and Arkéa-Samsic.

What Exactly Does This Mean?

Some fans might look at the above graph, see that Lotto and Israel are relegated, and assume these consequences for both teams are an equal problem and that both teams will not be present at top-level WorldTour races in 2023. While a logical assumption, it couldn’t be further from the much more complicated truth.

To fully understand the consequences of relegation, we first need to look at the UCI points standings from just the 2022 season.

2022 UCI Rankings

As we can see above, Jumbo-Visma, at least in terms of UCI points, was the most successful team of 2022, while Astana was by far the worst (I will break down these rankings in more depth in the coming weeks).

But, most relevant to the promotion/relegation discussion is Lotto-Soudal in 15th place, TotalEnergies in 17th place, and Israel-Premier Tech in 19th place.

This is important since due to the complex race selection rules in pro cycling, in addition to the 18 WorldTour teams and three wildcard team selections (another topic for another day) every major race is required to invite at least the top two performing second-divisions teams from the season prior (stage races invite the top two while the one-day races invite the top three).

The 2023 Wildcard Picture

WorldTour Stage Races (i.e. Giro d’Italia, Tour de France, Vuelta a Espana) IN: Lotto-Soudal – 6759 pts TotalEnergies – 6022 pts

OUT: Israel-Premier Tech – 4806 pts Uno-X – 2772.63 pts

WorldTour One-Day Races (i.e. Paris-Roubaix, Tour of Flanders) IN: Lotto-Soudal – 6759 pts TotalEnergies – 6022 pts Israel-Premier Tech – 4806 pts

OUT: Uno-X – 2772.63 pts

What This Means

As we can see above, the consequences of this are that while Lotto-Soudal and TotalEnergies will technically be outside of the WorldTour and down in the second-division, they will still receive automatic invitations to every major race. Conversely, while Israel-Premier Tech will receive invitations to one-day races, they won’t be invited to stage races. This is significant since the single most important in cycling is the Tour de France, and if a team can’t get an invitation, they fail to offer a compelling case to potential sponsors and top riders.

In theory, Israel-Premier Tech is still eligible for wildcard invitations to grand tours, but these are distributed via old-boy networks and, as such, almost exclusively go to second-division teams based in the home country of the grand tour. This means that since the team is based outside of Europe and lacks any major French stars, like Julian Alaphilippe, they have an uphill (or expensive) battle to being invited to the Tour de France.

While most contracts in cycling give riders and sponsors an automatic out if a team fails to stay in the WorldTour, there is little, to no, incentive to actually trigger these clauses if a team still has an automatic path to the cash cow that is the Tour de France. But, on the flip side, a failure to gain an invitation to the Tour de France is usually fatal for a team since, without top sponsors and riders, an outfit has little to offer. Also,

The Hidden Upside for Lotto-Soudal

An interesting wrinkle here is that as the top second-division teams are that they have an advantage over the WorldTour teams since they receive invitations to these races, but have no obligation to attend, which means they can sit out of shoulder grand tours to conserve rider and financial resources.

Lotto will be able to pick and chose – and save money

While they do have to perform well enough every year to finish inside the top two second-division teams and don’t get the three-year security of the WorldTour teams, this task is incredibly manageable since they have the benefit of picking and choosing their events, which means they can opt-out of bigger races where they have little chance of scoring points and instead send strong teams to enough lower-level races to easily rack up enough UCI points to stay ahead of nearly all the other second-division outfits (this will, in turn, also make it easier for them to make the WorldTour cut in 2026 than the lower-level WorldTour teams).

The State of Play For the 2023 Season

So, in short, the WorldTour for the next three seasons will reflect the following 18 teams, with Lotto and TotalEnergies able to tag along to any events they wish for the 2023 season, and Israel-Premier Tech attending major one-day events.

Of course, this could all be disrupted if one of the 18 WorldTour teams loses a sponsor and is unable to fund their outfit, which would either see one of the second-division teams promoted to fill the slot or the automatic invitations slots increased (both would have the same effect of allowing all of Lotto, Total and Israel being invited to ever major event).

2023-2025 UCI WorldTour 1) Jumbo-Visma 2) QuickStep 3) Ineos 4) UAE 5) Bora-Hansgrohe 6) Bahrain 7) FDJ 8) Alpecin-Deceuninck 9) Trek 10) Intermarché-Wanty 11) AG2R 12) Movistar 13) Astana 14) Cofidis 15) DSM 16) EF 17) BikeExchange 18) Arkéa-Samsic

2023 Carte Blanche Automatic Invite Teams 19) Lotto-Soudal 20) TotalEnergies

2023 One-Day Only Automatic Invite Teams 21) Israel-Premier Tech

# Spencer Martin is the author of the cycling-analysis newsletter Beyond the Peloton that breaks down the nuances of each race and answers big picture questions surrounding team and rider performance. Sign up now to get full access to all the available content and race breakdowns. #

Spencer Martin authors the cycling-analysis newsletter Beyond the Peloton that breaks down the nuances of each race and attempts to bring a logic-based approach to cycling coverage. He is also a partner in cycling business publication The Outer Line, and in the past, has written for cycling outlets such as Velonews and CyclingTips. He has raced at a high-level in the past and still enjoys participating in a wide variety of races as well as riding in the mountains surrounding his residence in Boulder, Colorado. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @spencersoward.

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The New WorldTour Points System Explained

Following complaints from numerous teams about the WorldTour’s promotion and relegation system, the UCI has published new regulations with significant changes. The rule amendment has been published less than a month before the start of the new 2023-2025 triennium, whose cumulative ranking will determine which 18 teams will be part of the WorldTour in 2026-2028.

In summary, there have been three important changes, which will be discussed in more detail below:

• The UCI points scale gives much more importance to Grand Tours and Monuments, as well as to stages in WorldTour stage races.
• The UCI World Ranking for teams, both annually and across the triennium, will take into account the 20 best riders of each team, instead of 10 as at present.
• Teams relegated by the sporting criterion will have automatic invitations in 2023 for the entire UCI WorldTour, except for the Grand Tours. In practice, this allows Israel – Premier Tech to receive automatic invitations to all one week WorldTour stage races, even though they did not qualify for them under the rules in force during the 2020-22 triennium.

UCI Points Allocation

The UCI has revolutionised the scoring system for the next three years (2023-2025), with the objective of incentivising the best riders to participate in the most important races. To this end, they have multiplied by a factor of 1.6x the points allocated to the Monuments and the Road Race of the World Championships and Olympic Games. The points in the general classification of the Grand Tours and the ITT of the World Championships and Olympic Games have also been multiplied by a factor of 1.3x.

However, the most impactful change is the value of stages in Grand Tours and the rest of the WorldTour stage races. Whereas before only the top 5 in a Grand Tour stage and the top 3 in the rest of the WorldTour stages were awarded points, in 2023 the top 15 in a Grand Tour stage and the top 10 in the rest of the WorldTour stages will be awarded points. In addition, a much higher value will be given on places of honour in the stages. For example, in 2022 an individual stage in the Tour distributed a total of 240 UCI points, whereas in 2023 it will distribute 935 UCI points, a 290% increase.

In the following image, you can see the new scoring system, with the new Monuments category, differentiated from the rest of the classics. We recommend you to download it in high resolution from here .

Based on the calendar contested in 2022, this change in the scoring system means that there are 28% more UCI points at stake (308,903 vs. 241,027). But as the scoring of the continental circuit races has virtually remained the same (except for a slight increase in points for the ProSeries stages), this smaller calendar will see its importance reduced. Whereas under the previous scoring system the continental calendar shared half of the available UCI points, in 2023 it will share 40%.

As we can see in the graph, the most important races (Grand Tour, Monuments and Worlds) will now have a much higher weight (36% vs 23%). This was a demand from many WorldTeams and even fans, although it will hurt teams that do not have automatic access to those races, like Uno-X. The new scoring system will also benefit ProTeams that have wildcards for WorldTour races in 2023 (such as Lotto, Total and Israel) over those that do not (Uno-X and the rest), as they will be more likely to keep the invitations season after season with immediate access to the most profitable races.

Also the weight of the classics (except for the Monuments) is reduced in favour of stages in stage races. In 2022, all teams at risk of relegation added a large number of minor classics to their calendar, but from 2023 they will have to look for more places of honour in WorldTour stages. The forgotten riders of the previous points system, breakaway stage hunting specialists and consistent stage race sprinters, are suddenly much more valuable under the new scoring system. For example, Hugh Carthy targeted breakaway stages in the second-half of the Giro d’Italia 2022, placing fourth on the stages to Cogne and Lavarone, earning him a paltry 24 UCI points.

Under the new system, Carthy would have scored 160 points across both stages, a 567% increase. In the bunch sprints, Alberto Dainese scored 108 points across the three weeks of Il Giro 2022, but in 2023 he would have scored 370 points for his victory and five top 10 placements.

While most of the changes are logical, the UCI has left the door open to some schedule ‘optimisation’. For example, Continental Championships outside Europe still award 250 points to the winner of the road race (more than a stage of the Tour) and National Championships (some with a very low sporting level) still award 100 points to the winner of the road race.

20 Riders Count per Team

From 2023, the UCI World Team Ranking, used for the relegation battle ranking and to hand out automatic wildcards annually, will take into account the top 20 riders per team instead of the top 10. According to the UCI, this “will help to reduce the pressure currently imposed on only a limited number of riders, which can lead to a number of negative consequences (risks of injury, excessive number of race days, temptation to doping, etc.)”.

To better understand the impact of the new measure, the following graph shows how the 2020-2022 ranking would have changed if the top 20 riders had been taken into account. Lotto Soudal and Israel – Premier Tech would have been relegated anyway, although Israel would have been much closer to salvation.

The teams most dependent on their leaders (Jumbo, Alpecin, Movistar or BikeExchange) would have added the least percentage of points. ProTeams with shorter squads or without 20 riders capable to score points, such as Uno-X, Bingoal or Q36.5, will also be disadvantaged in 2023. Teams such as Quickstep or UAE Team Emirates, with large race programs and a deep pool of riders capable of scoring points, should be advantaged by this change.

The Israel Rule

The latest and perhaps most unexpected change is the UCI’s decision to “gift” Israel with invitations to all one week WorldTour stage races in 2023. It is worth remembering that Israel Premier Tech finished third in the ranking that awarded the 2023 wildcards and had therefore only won the wildcards to the one day WorldTour races on sporting merit. The UCI has clarified that the measure is temporary only for 2023, “coming as it does after three years of significant upheaval due to the global pandemic.”

This emergency measure by the UCI has surely calmed down Israel – Premier Tech owner Sylvan Adams after the millionaire threatened to sue the UCI for the implementation of the relegation system. Israel are also a favourite for the Giro and Tour discretionary organiser wildcards, so they will not feel the effects of the relegation as much, with the Vuelta being the only major race they will likely be absent from in 2023. The extra invitation for Israel takes a wildcard away from the organisers of one week WorldTour races and hurts again modest teams like Uno-X, Q36.5 or Kern Pharma.

The only constant about the UCI points and relegation system is that it is always changing, this time at very short notice. In imperfect systems there will always be winners and losers from structural changes such as these, with teams like UNO-X surely aggrieved by new regulations that make their path to WorldTour promotion more difficult. However if the changes function as intended, there may be some positives for the fans, with teams like Lotto-DSTNY now incentivised to send superstar Arnaud de Lie to more major stage races rather than entirely focussing on a local calendar.

18 comments

Always a must-read! 👏🏻 In your personal opinion will the “Sylvan Adams” rule actually help his team score more points? their squad seems weaker than it was last year so i don’t see them scoring many points in the 2.UWT races, even if they send their best riders, what would hurt their ability to score points at smaller races that occur at the same time.

Also it seems like a bad decision from the UCI to publish the rules change a week before 2023 and not much earlier when teams could’ve had times to perhaps sign other riders or tweak the training program, well unless the teams were told about these future changes in advance.

Good article indeed.

And announcement is too late indeed.

The fact they have starting right (not obligation) is obviously a plus for Israel. Also the increased points are obviously an advantage I think. They have more GC guys than Total and Lotto. Lotto also only has 26 riders under contract.

Short term only those two teams and Uno-X matter. If they do a lot more races than some of the WorlTour teams, they will promote again. But being in the top 2 of the ProTour teams is crucial for that promotion.

Lotto should now hire extra racers and also fully use the advantages of its development team (Total does not have a development team).

Overall I like the changes, and think they are all going in the right direction. I wonder if they have overshot the mark on some of them though.

The increase in points for stage wins is great. A stage win at the TdF worth more than a ProSeries win makes sense. I’m just not sure placings down to 15 needed points though. Maybe points just to the top 10 would have been enough.

Counting the top 20 riders seems an overshoot as well. I agree that the top 10 was too few. Was the “reasoning” to make sure domestiques didn’t feel pressure ? Maybe just the top 15 would be better.

Maybe next year, or in three years, we will see refinements and adjustments again, perhaps backing down a bit on these changes.

Agree that top 15 would have been better.

Top 20 is really bad for the protour teams with only 20 racers (although their chance to end up in the top 2 or promotion spots is low).

Also Lotto is kind of forced to hire 4 extra racers to score I think. There are still some options, but they are limited. They could also promote racers out of the development team whose points then probably count when they race with the development team in .1 and .pro races? It might remove their opportunity to do .2 races?

As for the top 15 spots that count in the Tour de France I like it for Tour de France as those positions still count for the Green Jersey. And for other stage races it is logical only the top 10 counts.

For the one day races, up the top 60 counts. I think that should be changed. For 1.1 races, you could count top 20, for 1.pro top 30, for 1.UWT top 40 and for monuments top 50.

Or even less points: top 10 for 1.1., top 15 for 1.pro, top 20 for worst UWT, top 25 for best UWT and top 30 for monuments. I am suprised they didnt change points in the one day races.

The reasoning is that under the old system we reached a point near the end of the year where riders outside the top 10 on good form had to domestique for riders in the top 10 because otherwise they wouldn’t score any points.

Indeed. That was bad. It had to be more than top 10 racers, but 20 seems too much.

• Pingback: Quién sale ganando y quién no en el nuevo sistema de puntos de la UCI – Ciclismo en TV

Silly question, if you will: are all WT teams safe now until the next triennium in ‘26, or do we go again next year, for the final year of the past three? PS, I refresh this page most days for the next instalment, keep up the great work.

Everyone keeps their WT license for the next 3 years based on the promotion / relegation system. Of course some teams may fold or lose their license for financial or other reasons, but promotion / relegation is only on a 3 year cycle.

The wildcards for the Proteams like Lotto, Israel and TotalEnergies is determined annually though

Brilliant, thanks…and Merry Christmas

En principio me pareció que aumentar la puntuación en carreras WT era necesario y merecido, en cuanto eso me parece correcto, sin embargo el análisis conlleva al problema de la factibilidad de que los actuales equipos WT de desempeño medio bajo y Pro con invitación a las pruebas WT se mantengan ahí sin afanes y muy cómodos, y que equipos ProTour (especialmente los de licencias distintas a la española, francesa, italiana y belga) se vean tan damnificados en aspirar a ascender de categoría que tal vez varios prefieran migrar próximamente a continental. Creo que con esto se crea un veto.

Los cambios favorecen la estabilidad de los equipos WT y dificultan los cambios y los ascensos. De todos modos, está bien que se mantenga el sistema de ascensos y descensos después de tantas presiones. Si los equipos de segunda división hacen bien su trabajo seguirán teniendo sus opciones de ascender, aunque sea un poco más difícil.

Muchas gracias Raúl. Tremendo trabajo. Este post es de lectura obligatoria para cualquier persona que siga el ciclismo profesional.

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UCI WorldTour rankings watch – Intermarché set out on top

At the end of the first month of racing, here's our roundup of the 2023 men's and women's WorldTour rankings

The rankings

It's the last day of the first racing month of the 2023 season, and the latest UCI rankings have just been published, with Intermarché-Circus-Wanty the top men's team in what they're hailing as a historic moment. 

FDJ-Suez are the top women's team after a storming start in Australia, although the women's season has yet to hit Europe and yet to truly get going. 

Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) are the top-ranked riders, despite not racing so far this year. That's because the individual World Ranking is based on a 12-month rolling points system. 

On top of that, Amanda Spratt tops the Women's WorldTour ranking, a separate season-only ranking for WorldTour races, giving the Australian the purple series leader's jersey.

It's still early in the season and many of the top riders - even some of the top teams on the women's side - have yet to start racing. However, the early action at the likes of the Tour Down Under and Challenge Mallorca have set the tone and introduced some sense of narrative.

2023 Pro Cycling Team Kits 2023 Cycling Transfers Women's WorldTour – The definitive guide for 2023 Women's WorldTour relegation battle: Points, rankings, and the teams in danger

In that respect, Intermarché-Circus-Wanty are still on the rise after punching far above their weight in 2022. The Belgian team looked like they didn't belong when they ascended to the WorldTour with CCC's old licence in 2021, but now look like one of the best-run teams in cycling, mixing Biniam Girmay 's star quality with contributions from others across the board. 

So far in 2023, they have already amassed 1330 points, with three wins on the board already. Kobe Goosens struck twice in Mallorca , with new signing Rui Costa making it three from five on the Spanish island, while Girmay was on the podium in the other two. Meanwhile, in Australia, Hugo Page was second in the Cadel Evans race after some stage top 10's at Tour Down Under, where Sven Erik Bystrøm was seventh overall. 

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"This 31st of January 2023 is a very special moment for our project! For the first time in its history, our team is in the lead of the UCI World Ranking. It is an extraordinary achievement which we never thought would be possible," said CEO Jean-François Bourlart.

"I'm thinking of all people involved since the launch of the amateur club VC Ath since 1974 to reach this remarkable milestone today. It is a fantastic reward for the team of 105 devoted people, both riders and staff, working day and night. We are incredibly proud of this achievement, even though this position is only provisional. We stay humble and continue to work hard for the future of our project, whilst enjoying this historical moment to the fullest."

Intermarché now sit above UAE Team Emirates , whose overall victory at the Tour Down Under through Jay Vine accounts for most of their 1151 points. 

In third place are Jayco-AlUla, who targeted the Australian summer with Simon Yates and Michael Matthews , although they're yet to count the points of sprinter Dylan Groenwegen who won on his season debut a the Saudi Tour and has more opportunities this week.

Soudal-QuickStep and Ineos Grenadiers round out the top five, while the two squads who were relegated from the WorldTour at the end of last season are both in the top 10 - Israel-Premier Tech in sixth and Lotto-Dstny in eighth. Jumbo-Visma, who won a stage of the Tour Down Under through Rohan Dennis , weren't racing at Challenge Mallorca or Vuelta a San Juan and find themselves way down in 28th place.

In the individual ranking, which is a rolling tally of points accrued in the 12 months up to the latest ranking date, Pogačar is still on top, with his total of points from 2022 effectively still intact. He leads Wout van Aert and Remco Evenepoel , with Sergio Higuita climbing to 10th the only change at the top after a month of racing. 

FDJ the top women's team as Spratt takes WorldTour lead

On the women's side, FDJ-Suez lead the teams' World Ranking after a dominant stint in Australia, with Grace Brown winning the national time trial title and then a stage and the overall of the Tour Down Under . Meanwhile, new signing and former e-racer Loes Adegeest made a storming debut in sport's top tier with victory at the Cadel Evans race. 

In second place are Trek-Segafredo , on 998 points to FDJ's 1208. A constant nearly-woman behind the FDJ pair, Amanda Spratt's runner-up finishes at TDU and Cadel's make up the lion's share of Trek's points, which are topped up by Brodie Chapman's national road race victory.

In third place on 847 points, and climbing two places from last week are Human Powered Health , who started the season as one of the teams in the relegation conversation but made a good start to putting that right through and Nina Buijsman and Henrietta Christie. 

In the individual World Ranking, Van Vleuten is still streets ahead after winning the Giro, Tour, Vuelta and world title in 2022, with Brown the only one of the top 10 to have raced this year. 

The women also have a separate, standalone WorldTour ranking comprising only the top-tier races each season. FDJ-Suez top that after winning both events - Tour Down Under and Cadel Evans - with Trek-Segafredo second and EF-Tibco-SVB third. 

It's Spratt who tops the individual WorldTour ranking, moving ahead of Brown after her runner-up finish in the Cadel Evans race. The winner there, Adegeest, rises 11 places to third. 

However, it's not worth reading too much into the women's rankings at this point as only six of the 15 WorldTour teams have started racing. Next week's inaugural UAE Tour, which is a WorldTour event, will have a deeper field. 

Follow along with Cyclingnews' guides to the Women's WorldTour races and standings and the Women's WorldTour relegation battle .

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Patrick is an NCTJ-trained journalist, and former deputy editor of Cyclingnews, who has seven years’ experience covering professional cycling. He has a modern languages degree from Durham University and has been able to put it to some use in what is a multi-lingual sport, with a particular focus on French and Spanish-speaking riders. Away from cycling, Patrick spends most of his time playing or watching other forms of sport - football, tennis, trail running, darts, to name a few, but he draws the line at rugby.

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UCI World Tour Promotion and Relegation Weekly

This week’s tables are very tight with Lotto-Soudal and BikeExchange-Jayco practically tied on points, spelling trouble for the Aussie team as their relegation rivals all had strong rides.

What’s Changed Since Last Week?

• Alpecin-Fenix and Arkéa-Samsic remain set for promotion to the World Tour
• Israel-PremierTech and Lotto-Soudal face relegation… just
• …BikeExchange-Jayco and Lotto-Soudal are practically tied on 12,629 points, just 0.33 points (yes, one third of a point, they can be divided up between riders in a team time trial) separates the two teams so the Australian team must be toey as
• Thanks to the Tour de Suisse and the Route d’Occitanie Bora-hansgrohe were the week’s top scorers with 693 points, ahead of Israel on 546 and EF Education-Easypost on 534. Lotto-Soudal got 320 points, mostly from their home Belgium tour and Tim Wellens’ second place
• The lowest scorer was Jumbo-Visma on zero after the team quit the Tour de Suisse. Arkéa-Samsic were the 4th lowest on 63, BikeExchange got 90.

The chart above shows the three year points haul of several teams scrapping to avoid relegation and just how tight things are getting with the Tour de France looming, watch those lines converge.

That’s for the weekly changes. Looking ahead this week BikeExchange might be relieved that the 1.1 Belgian one day race Halle-Ingooigem due for tomorrow is cancelled in case it’s another Arnaud De Lie points festival. In early July Lotto-Soudal, Israel and Cofidis are starting Romania’s Sibiu Tour, BikeExchange are not.

Taking a slightly longer view, Arkéa-Samsic got 4,000 points between the start of the season and April, but from May to now then they’ve taken about a thousand points. They’re ok for now but if they carry on stalling they risk being caught up again in the points battle and would not be promoted, one to keep an eye on.

Wider still, Pierre Carrey wrote an interesting piece for Le Temps (paywall) , a Swiss newspaper which a reader kindly shared. As well as the points/relegation battle now featuring in the pages of a newspaper, it explores the pressure on teams and riders to score points. You might have watched post-race inteviews on TV and openly heard riders talking about getting points, something nobody talked about openly earlier this year. Le Temps suggests the pressure is intense, one rider says “now you can’t overlook a sprint for 60th place” (there are 3 points in a one day World Tour race for 60th place). The article explains things are not as wild as before when UCI points where a virtual currency, a rider’s wage could be heavily influenced by their haul. This was problematic, an issue raised by the UCI’s ISSUL audit which looked at the incentives behind doping. Today teams can’t hire in riders for their points, today’s promotion/relegation system is about results obtained while a rider is racing for their current team.

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 .

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

The inability of bike exchange to secure title sponsors for many years is starting to bite. The number of riders capable of consistently getting points has reduced over the last few years to the point they only have 4. (yates, groenewegen, matthews and groves). And only one of them is GC where points are big. They need more funding from a proper title sponsor. I don;’t consider Bike exchange to be an independent sponsor as its just another company partly or wholly owned by the team owner and probably don’t contribute much.

In the meantime Sobrero also scored 15 points for italian time trial on top of the giro-points.

Also Kangert scored 30 in Estonia.

Lotto will need to score heavily in Belgian Time Trial to keep up, with also UK (does Yates start?) and Denmark (will Kron and Juul-Jensen start?) influencing the points for today.

Regular national championships will obviously also play their role.

Kangert was not one of the top 10 players of BikeExchange. So they only have 15 points for Sobrero.

De Gendt was injured, but Campenaerts scored points for third place. 5th place for Frison doesnt count, but with the additional 5 points for Vermeersch’ 6th place, Lotto Soudal is now virtually leading with 10 points over BikExchange. Tomorrow the gap might increase further.

BEX (or Orica Greenedge as was) were successful at first due to a certain freshness, enthusiasm and willingness to challenge the cycling status quo. From that they obtained some oustanding results from relatively ordinary riders (Gerrans, Hayman…) who used wiles and experience to triumph unexpectedly, all aided by a youthful management prepared to rock the boat a little. That initial enthusiasm seems to have dissipated partly, as Brent Sword suggests, by Ryan’s logical reluctance to spend too much of his family’s money and also the failure to replace Orica. Sadly they have to just accept the youthful enthusiasm inevitably has a finite life.

They’ve also had an internal upheaval with the management changes following the Manuela fiasco and it can take time to settle in. But do think their calendar choice is a big part, they don’t like to race much outside of the World Tour often and this maybe costs then as much as other factors.

But Manuela was surely a direct consequence of Ryan’s pressing desire to extricate himself from his open-ended commitment to the team. Finding the right sponsor will get harder as the years pass and status fades.

This idea that they don’t like to race outside the World Tour often is a myth. When they had sponsorship from Orica and a better team and the youthful enthusiasm to rock the boat they were very good at placing their riders to win small races.

They used to ride the smaller Spanish races a lot. They used to ride Slovenia before the country became hip. They rode in North American races like Utah and Alberta. They weren’t shy of sending a young Caleb Ewan to Langkawi and Korea.

If they choose not to do so now, for whatever reason, that’s their problem. But it’s got nothing at all to do with them not liking to race outside the World Tour.

They did do Estonia for the points and start to do more and more small races.

How much do we think BEX have suffered as a result of the TdU being cancelled for consecutive years? Naturally they always do well and dominate their home race and the Herald Sun Tour + Cadel RR. There must be a points hole there. Granted there are other factors at play as suggested above.

A fair bit, no doubt. But surely that should have provided extra incentive to go for the races that did run. Which they didn’t do.

Question @INRNG – how expensive is it for teams to participate in the 1.1 and 1.pro races. If a team has a base in Spain or Italy, could each additional race be 20-40K Euro, in transportation, hotel, additional labor, etc?

Groenewegen would definitely have been able to get a ton of points in the same races, that Arnaud De Lie was scoring. In retrospect, this seems like a tactical error. From a sporting perspective, it made sense to try to win a stage at the Dauphine, albeit with low odds, instead of just reloading for the one day .1, and .pro would probability-wise produce better results.

The pre-night hotel is covered by the team and there can be a small participation fee. But there’s getting all the staff, the fuel etc, and teams often hire in helpers for smaller races if core staff are at the main races. Hard to put a figure on it. But if the race is on TV then it’s often the purpose of the team to be there, it depends on the point or mission of the team and the sponsor, the audience they want to reach. As you say, now they just want points as well.

Most of those small races in Belgium are on TV in Belgium, and many are on Eurosport/GCN too I think? Same for many smaller races in Spain, Italy, France, etc. (local TV + Eurosport). So European sponsors get a reasonable amount of exposure.

It might be more problematic for Australian sponsors, I don’t know?

So I’d bet there must be some relegation clauses going into new rider contracts for next year at this rate. I can’t imagine Carapaz going to EF if they’re only hoping for grand tour wildcards…

It definitely adds an extra dimension to the transfer market. Relegation/get-out clauses are fine, but there have got to be spaces (and budget) available on other teams for you to go to (at what will be late in the year). For me, the 2022 points for 2023 auto invites, adds a really interesting additional layer to this. Whilst Total Energies are not in the mix for promotion, their 2022 points (and fact they seem to be starting to fire this season) means they’re a risk for teams like EF and BEX (and maybe Movistar) in 2023, should they be relegated.

Every team from Movistar on down is really on a knife’s edge. It looks like the margins will be very, very thin, and I’d expect that the Vuelta might be really insane. Multiple riders from the same team trying to get in every breakaway, a hard fought battle for 6th and 7th on GC etc. Things we would normally not pay attention to at all will suddenly become much more important.

The funny thing is… while last two seasons were covid-influenced, sure, several teams probably either neglected this whole story or – which is much more baffling – neglected it even for half of this season, until they got into the mixer.

Afaik inrng was the first who raised this issue (at least in English?), several other blogs and news duly followed and it almost seems several teams noticed the whole thing only from those sources… I am sure that’s just an very inaccurate impression, but it has certain comical side to it imho, with Movistar directors venting frustration with the system that has been running for two and half years already etc.

One team manager said I’d got it wrong and that this wasn’t the final third year when the licences were decided. They’re now hustling for points.

I’d had the same thought that this blog was the epicenter for the attention to the relaxation points issue. The more it was talked about here, the more I started seeing it show up elsewhere. Just another sign of how deeply in tune Inring is with the twists and turns of this sport.

The note that a team manager was so uninformed about this is both amazing and hardly surprising, given the nature of professional cycling (a sport that is far more tradition based than professionalized, so I say “professional cycling” with an intentional irony).

On another longer view, Astana have only scored 1,800 pts all season and with Lopez dropping out of the Tour must be feeling a little nervous: they’re in the Sibiu Tour too.

On the point of relegation clauses, it appears that the model contract for WorldTour riders already covers this:

“The Rider may terminate the present contract, without notice or liability for damages … if the UCI WorldTour licence for the team expires, is withdrawn, or if the UCI WorldTeam is suspended for a period of three months or more”

This could climax in a very weird Lombardia, even down to soigneurs, mechanics, DSs and team cars trying to get one over on each other to gain an edge. Watch out for the chilli oil spiked chamois cream

A covid lottery for relegation?

For GC-focused teams, there seems to be a potential that relegation might come down to who gets covid (or already did) at the wrong time. Bardet, Fulsang, Woods, Mas, Valverde, Yates, Izaguirre, Quitanna, Guerreiro, Carthy…and others would be missed.

Also, there is the injury wildcard as well – which was in full force at Liege-Bastogne-Liege, which definitely hurt some riders’ ability to score points for a while. However, every year teams are aware that injuries/sickness can happen.

To restate, Covid-19 is a lottery, despite an athlete’s or team’s great preparation, the externalities caused by others can have severe consequences.

And that is why I expect a close margin to result in both the 18th and 19th teams being waved through.

UCI will not want to risk the consequences of making the wrong bet on the legality of their regulations.

It’s pretty much impossible to “wave teams through”, as the WT race organizers like ASO, RCS & Flanders Classics (and all the smaller ones) would almost certainly veto that…

It also looks like UAE Emirates is soon going to be toxic for their non-neutral support of Russian energy and commodities exports. It will be interesting how soon the public starts berating the riders.

Obviously the riders are not fault for the lax moral standards of their sponsor UAE.

If we lived in a world with an ethical compass pointing North, this would be a huge issue. Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in, and I honestly don’t expect Pogacar fans to criticize UAE for anything, no matter how heinous. Messi recently signed on to be an ambassador for the Saudi state (despite already having more money than he or the next five generations of his family could possibly spend). From a moral perspective this should make Messi absolutely toxic. It won’t. His fans will simply ignore it. Sportswashing is a huge problem, and I don’t want to despair and say it can’t be solved, but when top level stars like Pogacar and Messi collaborate in it, we’re a long way away from any sort of solution.

Love these updates. Very intrigued to see how this all plays out what with 2 Grand Tours to contest. Agree that BEX must getting nervous. “BikeExchange-Jayco and Lotto-Soudal are practically tied on 12,629 points, just 0.33 points (yes, one third of a point, they can be divided up between riders in a team time trial) separates the two teams so the Australian team must be toey as” And to add to this – “As toey as a Roman sandal” is a phrase that gets ( or used to get ) used quite a bit in Australia.

I have a sneaking suspicion that all this is for nothing and no team will get relegated, or rather two teams will get relegated and then reinstated long before the new season starts.

I am absolutely certain there are a few very well remunerated lawyers who will find an obscure clause in EU law which invalidates relegation. In fact, I’d imagine this is all happening behind the scenes right now. We may never hear about these machinations, but it’s certain that no team is going to go down without exhausting every legal avenue possible.

It would be pretty obscure, given how entrenched promotion and relegation are in certain sports in Europe. The European Commission has previously described it as one of the characteristics of European sport as it rewards sporting merit. EU law doesn’t insist on promotion/relegation but it certainly doesn’t prohibit it.

Indeed. Should the (in my opinion) unexpected happen and there would be more than 18 WT teams when the 2023 season commences, it will quite definitely because of some “obscure clause in EU law”.

(I chose not to comment because it struck me as not entirely seriously meant, but more as a shorthand for anything resulting from…let’s say non sporting considerations that might arise between seasons.)

PS A good read on why there were 19 WorldTeams in 2013: http://inrng.com/2013/02/katusha-cas-crash-course/

Also no teams have come out against the system, either collectively or by themselves. Now a relegated team could protest against the system as a whole or some aspect of it, right down to a commissaire’s decision for littering etc, but there’s no outward sign of revolution. Can imagine a relegated team tries hard to explore angles if the worst happens to them.

Why would it be EU law when the UCI is in Switzerland and a lot of WT teams are registered outside the EU?

cause light minded people from the right think they could blame anything they don’t understand on “obscure EU laws”

Because 80% of the WT races are in the EU, including the one that gives teams most of their exposure/income.

There are no EU (or Swiss) laws against relegation.

And the rules for this have been around for years, so it’s not like this is a last minute change to the rules or anything like that.

Possible to add a relegation line on the animated bar chart?

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