Tadej Pogacar’s domination of the Tour de France did not leave much room for the rest. As was the case in the Giro, the number of victorious breakaways was the lowest since 2018, so the UCI points were heavily concentrated between the 3 podium teams: UAE, Visma and Soudal. While the two WorldTeams in relegation places (Astana and Arkéa) won stages in the first week, they were unable to score points regularly afterwards and their situation in the relegation ranking has worsened after the Tour.
2023-2025 UCI Ranking
As you can see in the ranking, Arkéa and especially Astana remain far away from the top18. Like Arkéa and Astana, DSM (18th) justified their Tour de France in the first week, with the display of Romain Bardet and Frank van den Broek, but the Tour was too long for them with few points afterwards. Cofidis keeps their 2000 UCI points lead, but they are living on last year’s rents, as this season they have only scored more points than Astana. Those 4 teams (Astana, Arkéa, DSM and Cofidis) are the most likely to be relegated at the end of 2025.
Despite the fact that Astana has a very good chance of relegation, the Kazakh team has found a new Chinese sponsor that should improve the team’s competitiveness. The company XDS will provide funding for at least 5 years “at the level of leading WorldTour teams”.
Further up in the ranking, we can see the group of Intermarché, Jayco, Movistar and Israel, who have more or less a 4000-point lead over the relegation zone and can be more relaxed. The Tour has been a turning point for Intermarché, who had been having a discreet season marked by injuries. The 3 stage wins and the green jersey of Biniam Girmay has distanced them from relegation and they have also managed to renew Girmay until 2028. Israel, Movistar and Jayco have also extended their lead over the relegation zone during the Tour.
Aiming to be promoted to the WorldTour, Uno-X has moved closer to the top 18 in the last three months, after a great winning streak in June and a very active Tour. The Norwegian team was at 3850 points at the end of April and have managed to get within 2300 points of DSM. Although still a big disadvantage, they are in contention for promotion with more than a season to go before the end of the triennium, when the WorldTeam licences will be handed out at the end of 2025.
2024 Ranking
In the 2024 annual ranking, UAE has managed to score more than twice as many points as second-placed Visma. The Emirati team is close to matching their points tally from last season, which ended with 30963. Furthermore, it can be spotted that Astana, Cofidis, DSM and Arkéa, the 4 WorldTeams involved in the relegation battle, are the 4 WorldTeams with the fewest UCI points in 2024. Uno-X is already among the top 18 teams in 2024, but in the triennium ranking they have to overcome the disadvantage with which they finished 2023 to aspire to promotion.
As we said, during the Tour de France the UCI points were very concentrated between UAE, Visma and Soudal. In last year's Tour de France there were 9 teams above 1500 UCI points, while this year there were only 3 teams above 1500 points. In addition, strong teams such as Ineos, Red Bull - Bora, Lidl-Trek or Decathlon had a rather discreet role. The worst team of the Tour was Groupama-FDJ, which is also the team with the most consecutive editions without a win in the Tour, since Thibaut Pinot's victory on the Col du Tourmalet on stage 14 of the 2019 Tour de France.
The Tour de France once again showed how profitable it is to take a sprinter, especially if he can finish in the top10 of the stages on a regular basis. In addition to the dominant Girmay and Philipsen, also Ackermann, De Lie, Bauhaus, Groenewegen, Gaviria, Kristoff and Coquard were among the 25 riders with the most UCI points in the Tour. Cofidis was the only team not to finish any stage in the top 5, but with 7 top10s and Coquard's third place in the points classification, they were able to finish the Tour with more UCI points than Arkéa or Astana, who won stages.
In the remaining two and a half months of the season, we will have a first part with many stage races and, after La Vuelta, a predominance of one-day races, which will hand out plenty of UCI points.
In the interactive chart below, you can see the UCI points of all the riders of the 22 teams that aspire to WorldTour licences. Only the top8 teams have more points than Tadej Pogacar alone.
2025 Wildcards
Regarding the ProTeams ranking, Israel has overtaken Lotto and both are ahead of Uno-X by 2000 points. In principle, Israel and Lotto will have the wildcards to the entire WorldTour again in 2025, as it is almost impossible for Uno-X to make up 2000 points in the remainder of the season. In any case, the Norwegian team has extended its lead over Tudor, consolidating its position as the third best ProTeam, which will give them access to all WorldTour classics again in 2025.
On another note, Corratec and Euskaltel have dropped out of the top 40 of the annual team ranking, which would leave them ineligible for Giro and Vuelta wildcards next season. In the national championships, some teams with many international riders or riders from exotic countries were able to score many more UCI points than Euskaltel or Corratec, which fell further in the ranking. This week, Euskaltel has the opportunity to score at the Volta a Portugal (2.1), the only international race that is taking place before the road race and the Olympic Games.
very interesting and clear as always
thanks for keeping this alive, its an unique content format for the geeks amongst cycling fans