Arkéa and DSM Trade Blows in the Relegation Battle | April 2024 UCI Ranking Analysis

The classics season has tightened the WorldTour relegation battle. In this last month, Arkéa (19th in the ranking) and DSM (18th in the ranking) have started to achieve good results and the teams ahead of them, such as Cofidis, Movistar or Intermarché have seen their advantage over the relegation zone greatly reduced. On another level, Decathlon Ag2r (18th in 2023) has managed to escape from danger with numerous prestigious victories.

2023-2025 UCI Ranking

As you can see in the graph, Decathlon and Israel have moved up positions since our analysis last month, while Intermarché and Movistar have lost those positions and are closer to the relegation zone. Meanwhile, Astana remains in a dire situation, deep in the relegation zone. Despite having improved their results with the victories of Lutsenko in Il Giro d’Abruzzo and Kanter in the Tour of Türkiye, the great performances of DSM in Liège – Bastogne – Liège (2nd with Bardet) and the Tour of Türkiye (victory in the GC plus 5 stages) mean that they are further than ever from salvation.

While Decathlon can now virtually forget about the danger of relegation, Israel still does not have a reassuring margin, although Stephen Williams’ victory at La Flèche Wallonne still increases the chances of the Israeli team returning to the WorldTour at the end of the 2025 season. However, the points scored by sensation Joseph Blackmore (508 UCI points in 2024) in races such as La Flèche Brabançonne have added up for the Israel development team and not the ProTeam, as he is contracted to the development team until the end of 2024 and the ProTeam already has the maximum of 30 riders for this season.

One team that is making good use of its development team is Arkéa, which is taking advantage of it to cover more calendar and have broader opportunities to score UCI points. Arkéa have used riders from their development team in 32 of the 42 ProSeries or .1 races they have participated in so far in 2024. For example, in O Gran Camiño (2.1), they competed with 4 development team riders and only 2 WorldTeam riders. In other races such as La Roue Tourangelle (1.1), the Classic Loire Atlantique (1.1), the Paris - Camembert (1.1) or the Tour du Doubs (1.1) they competed with 3 riders from the development team. In this case, no Arkéa Continentale rider has scored a significant amount of UCI points, but they act as domestique riders for the WorldTeam riders to score points.

Thanks to the large number of racedays and the second places of Luca Mozzato in Ronde van Vlaanderen and Kévin Vauquelin in La Flèche Wallonne, Arkéa has managed to reduce its deficit to just over 1,000 UCI points compared to DSM and Cofidis. Moreover, most of its best riders, such as Démare, Vauquelin, Mozzato, Champoussin or Capiot, are under contract in 2025, so they will be able to continue scoring UCI points until the end of the WorldTour licence cycle. Arkéa's comeback is compressing the lower part of the ranking and making rivals like Movistar nervous, where Alejandro Valverde recently declared that "we are back with the fucking points".

2024 Ranking

Apart from UAE almost doubling the points of the second placed team, in the ranking of only the 2024 season we can see that Intermarché, Movistar, Cofidis and Astana are the WorldTeams that are suffering the most this season. Those four teams are the ones that are worsening their situation in the relegation battle. In the following graph, you can see how Intermarché, Movistar and Cofidis have achieved much worse results at the start of 2024 compared to the start of 2023.

Regarding Movistar, the Spanish team has suffered several injuries and especially Nairo Quintana has not yet been able to compete in top shape. In addition, they have not been able to translate the good form of Lazkano and García Cortina into outstanding results in the classics. Enric Mas set himself the Tour de Romandie as a goal (without the big dominators in attendance) and he has not been able to shine either, finishing sixth in the GC. It should be noted that Matteo Jorgenson was their top scorer in 2023 and this season he is at Visma where he is their leading scorer with over 1,000 UCI points.

Cofidis remains the only WorldTeam without a win in 2024, but at least they have received the good news that sponsor Cofidis has renewed its sponsorship until 2028. Intermarché, for its part, had Louis Meintjes' victory in the semi-neutralised Basque Country stage, but the UCI has decided to cancel the UCI points from that stage. This spring, the Belgian team has suffered injuries to Gerben Thijssen, Arne Marit, Simone Petilli and Boy Van Poppel, while Taco van der Hoorn has still not returned to competition since suffering a concussion at the 2023 Ronde van Vlaanderen. Intermarché hopes to reverse this negative trend with Biniam Girmay at the Giro d'Italia.

In the interactive chart below, you can see the UCI points of all the riders of the 22 teams aiming for WorldTour licenses.

2025 Wildcards

As for the fight for the 2025 WorldTour wildcards, Lotto and Israel continue to increase their lead in the top two positions. Lotto is being boosted especially by Maxim Van Gils (top5 in Flèche and Liège), who is the sixth cyclist with the most UCI points so far in the 2024 season. In the fight for the third position, which gives access to the WorldTour one-day races, Uno-X has moved up to third, overtaking Tudor, while TotalEnergies is also in the fight.

Finally, Corratec Vini Fantini remains outside the top 40 of the overall team ranking and would not be able to apply for a Giro d´Italia wildcard in 2025. Euskaltel-Euskadi and TDT-Unibet have managed to break into the top 40, but remain on the edge and will need to keep scoring points to be eligible for an wildcard to the Grand Tours in 2025.