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The ultimate World Rankings at the moment are official, with the UCI publishing the staff standings for the 2022 season to finish the 2020-2022 Staff Rankings. What has been suspected for a number of weeks now will be confirmed: Alpecin-Deceuninck and Arkéa-Samsic have glad the sporting standards in direction of their goal of becoming a member of the 2023-2025 UCI WorldTour, whereas Lotto Soudal and Israel-Premier Tech haven’t.
All groups nonetheless should meet the opposite standards when it comes to funds, administration, ethics and organisation, and the UCI’s closing choices to award the WorldTour licences for the following three seasons might be made later this yr.
On this closing version of the “relegation watch” for 2022, we comply with the rationalization of the UCI WorldTour factors system and weeks of hypothesis about who might be promoted and which staff will miss out on the following three years within the WorldTour with a take a look at how the promotees made it and the way the demotees missed it.
The tortoise and the hare
The 2 promotees, Alpecin-Deceuninck and Arkéa-Samsic, made the rankings at totally different paces, the previous rocketing from nowhere in 2018 to being one of many prime 10 groups by 2022 whereas the latter have saved steadily on the throttle in a gradual ascent.
Alpecin-Deceuninck’s explosive development got here largely because of the outcomes and prodigious expertise of Mathieu van der Poel however the staff has additionally benefited tremendously from the imaginative and prescient, ambition and shrewd dealings of Christophe and Philip Roodhooft. The staff began as a Continental outfit and cyclo-cross staff, with Niels Albert the primary huge title within the squad.
Van der Poel’s older brother David was the primary to hitch in 2011, with Mathieu becoming a member of the following yr when the staff raced as BKCP-Powerplus. They gained Beobank and Corendon as title sponsors in 2016. When Van der Poel lastly determined to show his focus to the highway after his vastly profitable years in cyclo-cross, the staff stepped as much as the ProTeam degree in 2019 and secured wildcard invites for the staff to do the Classics.
That first yr, Van der Poel completed 4th in Gent-Wevelgem and Tour of Flanders, received De Brabantse Pijl and the Amstel Gold Race and set the staff up for his or her profitable 2020-2022 rating. Since then, prime scorers have included Jasper Philipsen, Tim Merlier, Driers De Bondt, Stefano Oldani and Jay Vine – all Grand Tour stage winners – in an outfit with as a lot if no more depth than some WorldTeams.
Arkéa-Samsic’s rise to the WorldTour was much less stratospheric than Alpecin-Deceuninck’s however was constructed on a stable basis of 12 years within the ProTeam ranks. Beginning as Bretagne-Schuller in 2011, the staff has lengthy been a wildcard staff within the Tour de France. Warren Barguil joined from Staff Sunweb in 2018 because the staff started to lift its ambitions.
The brand new UCI guidelines post-WorldTour reforms that awarded computerized invites to the highest ProTeams helped them considerably however their principal Grand Tour focus stayed on the Tour de France, and so they solely added the Vuelta a España to their calendar for the primary time in 2022. They reportedly declined a possibility to race the Giro d’Italia, preferring to scrape factors in lower-level races throughout Could to safe sufficient factors towards the sporting standards.
The hassle paid off, not helped by the disqualification of Nairo Quintana’s factors from the Tour de France. As a substitute, it was new recruit Hugo Hofstetter, introduced on from Israel this yr, who topped the factors tally with a powerful early season Classics marketing campaign and a victory within the Tro-Bro Léon. Barguil and Quintana had been additionally main contributors to their whole.
Relegated groups and DNQs
Groups in yellow, Alpecin-Deceuninck and Arkéa-Samsic, might be promoted. Groups in inexperienced – Lotto Soudal and TotalEnergies – completed as the highest groups subsequent to the WorldTour/promoted groups, whereas Uno-X and Israel-PremierTech is not going to earn computerized invites.
On the sadder aspect of the rankings, the promotion/relegation system landed onerous on two groups, Lotto Soudal and Israel-Premier Tech, whereas TotalEnergies‘ and Uno-X Professional Biking’s ambitions to maneuver as much as the WorldTour didn’t pan out.
The 2 relegated WorldTeams had very totally different seasons, with Lotto Soudal charging up the annual rankings and ending the yr in 14th general, whereas Israel-Premier Tech struggled in nineteenth in 2022.
Lotto Soudal’s sturdy exhibiting didn’t handle to make up for his or her poor showings up to now two seasons, and Arkéa-Samsic in 18th place held an unassailable 995-point margin forward of the Belgian staff within the closing three-year standings.
Lotto Soudal have dedicated to persevering with as a ProTeam, and – thanks largely to their younger sprinter Arnaud De Lie – in the event that they do, they may enter because the top-ranked ProTeam of 2022, a designation that earns computerized invites to GrandTours and different main WorldTour races.
Israel-Premier Tech’s future is much less sure amid proprietor Sylvan Adams’ bluster about suing the UCI.
The staff made their method into the WorldTour in 2020 by shopping for out Katusha’s administration firm after Katusha misplaced Alpecin and bike sponsor Canyon to Mathieu van der Poel’s staff.
Israel-Premier Tech struggled to show themselves aggressive with the highest WorldTeams. They completed twentieth in 2020 earlier than having a extra stable season final yr with prime outcomes from Dan Martin, who subsequently retired, Michael Woods, Hugo Hofstetter, and Alessandro De Marchi.
However the staff was hit onerous by COVID-19 this yr and a number of other key riders had tough seasons. Chris Froome was nowhere close to the staff’s prime 10 scoring riders and didn’t contribute to their three-year factors tally. His third place on the Alpe d’Huez stage of the Tour de France was the primary glimmer of promise that his former glory would possibly return, however extra outcomes by no means materialised.
The staff’s determined mid-season hiring of Dylan Teuns away from Bahrain Victorious didn’t repay, as he too did not make the highest 10 and his factors from the GP de Wallonie and Tour of Britain did not consider.
Whether or not the staff will proceed as a ProTeam is unsure, though the information that Israel-Premier Tech will turn into the title sponsor for a girls’s WorldTeam subsequent season appears foreboding.
Two different groups meant to use for WorldTour licences however haven’t made the sporting standards. TotalEnergies’ main investments in Peter Sagan and Daniel Oss this season did not fairly repay, and so they had been by no means actually in competition for promotion. Neither had been Uno-X, who didn’t get sufficient race invites to realistically overtake any of the highest groups. The latter will depend on the arrival of Alexander Kristoff in 2023 to construct a aggressive roster for the following cycle.
Huge groups dominate, Cofidis and Intermarché shock
Jumbo-Visma, QuickStep-AlphaVinyl, Ineos Grenadiers and UAE Staff Emirates dominated the three-year rankings, incomes double the factors of among the lower-ranked WorldTeams. Even QuickStep’s poor begin to 2022 had little impact – they had been solely sixth finest this yr even with Remco Evenepoel’s victories within the Vuelta a España and World Championships.
The primary motion throughout the mid-level WorldTeams got here from Cofidis and Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert. The French staff was predicted to be preventing the relegation zone all season however as an alternative, they claimed 19 victories together with a stage of the Vuelta with Jesus Herrada.
Guillaume Martin was Cofidis’ finest scoring rider, producing outcomes all through the season from one-day ProSeries race podiums just like the Drôme Traditional and Coppa Sabatini to WorldTour prime 10s in Paris-Good and Volta a Catalunya. Had he not been compelled to depart the Tour de France after contracting COVID-19, he could have scored even larger.
The staff relied on its depth, with stable hauls from Axel Zingle, Herrada, Benjamin Thomas, Simone Consonni, Ion Izagirre, Max Walscheid, Piet Allegaert, Bryan Coquard and Simon Geschke all serving to to tug them method up from the hazard zone into 14th within the three-year rankings.
Intermarché, the latest WorldTeam, had been solely within the WorldTour in 2021 and 2022, however after shopping for the licence from the CCC Staff, who went underneath within the pandemic in 2020, they rapidly established themselves as worthy of the highest degree of professional biking.
Signing Alexander Kristoff was a shrewd transfer, and the Norwegian’s large haul from ProSeries races just like the Scheldeprijs absolutely helped them transfer from seventeenth after 2021 to tenth. But it surely was Eritrean Biniam Girmay who supplied essentially the most pleasure, with a historic victory in Gent-Wevelgem and a stage win within the Giro d’Italia, a podium within the GP de Québec and a win in Mallorca making him the staff’s next-best scorer.
The renaissance of riders like Louis Meintjes and Domenico Pozzovivo and dependable outcomes from Quinten Hermans, Jan Hirt, Loïc Vliegen and Andrea Pasqualon, and the emergence of younger sprinter Gerben Thijssen all contributed to the staff’s sturdy exhibiting.
On the opposite finish of the spectrum, Staff DSM have light from fifth in 2020 (largely resulting from Jai Hindley and Wilco Kelderman’s Giro d’Italia podiums) to eleventh in 2021, and all the way down to fifteenth within the 2020-2022 rankings. Their twentieth place this yr must be worrying the staff as they head into the low season.
Astana additionally ought to be worrying: they’ve struggled with their monetary mannequin of being supported by state funding pursuits, are dropping Vincenzo Nibali to retirement and had been a regarding twenty first within the 2022 staff rankings.
After briefly falling close to the relegation zone, Movistar Staff, BikeExchange-Jayco and EF Schooling-EasyPost pulled out all of the stops, packing on leads to the final weeks of the season.
Movistar closed with a win in Tour de Langkawi because of Ivan Sosa, EF-EasyPost took residence the Japan Cup with Neilson Powless, whereas BikeExchange-Jayco relied on sprinter Dylan Groenewegen to shore up their whole within the late-season one-day races.
