Pogačar, UAE Team Emirates high UCI rankings, Astana shedding struggle towards relegation

With commanding victories in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Strade Bianche and the Volta a Catalunya, Tadej Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates proceed to steer the UCI rankings, whereas SD Worx-Protime and Lotte Kopecky are on the high of the ladies’s rankings on the finish of the Spring Classics.

Kopecky simply surpassed final 12 months’s top-ranked rider, teammate Demi Vollering, because of her victories in Paris-Roubaix, Strade Bianche, Nokere Koerse and the UAE Tour. Her minor factors from Liège-Bastogne-Liège and La Flèche Wallonne along with factors for being WorldTour chief pushed her into the highest spot for the primary time.

Pogačar has been the game’s number-one ranked rider since profitable the Tour de France for the second time in July 2021 and he has not given up the highest spot since.

Because the UCI Rankings are calculated on a 12-month rolling calendar, Pogačar has been capable of maintain his place by profitable one-day Classics like Il Lombardia, the Tour of Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège even when he completed second to Jonas Vingegaard within the Tour de France. Despite profitable all three Grand Tours in 2023, Visma weren’t the top-ranked workforce, thanks largely to Pogačar’s Classics outcomes.

In the race to stay within the WorldTour when the subsequent spherical of relegation happens on the finish of the 2025 season, UAE Team Emirates are additionally ranked first forward of Visma-Lease a Bike, Soudal-QuickStep and Ineos Grenadiers.

The identical 4 groups have been additionally on the high of the three-year rankings on the finish of 2022, though Lidl-Trek have begun to threaten Ineos’ place. With a robust run of outcomes from Mads Pedersen and Mattias Skjelmose, they’re ranked third for the 12 months and fifth within the mixed 2023-2024 rankings.

The two groups that have been relegated from the WorldTour in 2022 for not making the highest 18 groups within the UCI Team Rankings, Lotto-Dstny and Israel-Premier Tech, are in a a lot stronger place this time round. Lotto-Dstny are ranked ninth this 12 months and within the 2023-2024 rankings, whereas Israel-Premier Tech moved two spots to twelfth.

Lotto-Dstny gained most of their factors in 2023 with Arnaud De Lie, however with the Belgian out of motion with Lyme illness, Maxim Van Gils and Lennert van Eetvelt have crammed in with high finishes within the Classics and the UAE Tour, respectively.

Stevie Williams bolstered Israel-Premier Tech’s hopes of rejoining the WorldTour with wins within the Tour Down Under and Flèche Wallonne.

Other groups that needed to scramble for factors in 2022, Jayco-AlUla and EF Education-EasyPost, are additionally out of the fear zone with sensible recruitment methods and due to the UCI’s revamp of the factors system.

Teams which have to fret are Astana Qazaqstan, at the moment twentieth within the 2023-2024 rankings, and Arkéa-B&B Hotels in nineteenth. The French workforce may simply climb into the highest 18. After Luca Mozzato’s podium within the Tour of Flanders and Koksijde Classic victory, they’re ranked eleventh this 12 months and shutting in on DSM-Firmenich-PostNL within the two-year rankings.

Astana, who’ve invested closely in Mark Cavendish and his related lead-out prepare, haven’t seen a revenue from their technique as of but. They’ve fallen from thirteenth within the 2020-2022 rankings to twentieth and are all the way down to twenty first within the rankings for 2024.

The girls’s WorldTour groups have simply begun to build up factors towards the subsequent two-year cycle, which ended final season with none groups shedding their place.