UCI ranking: Fear of relegation is rife in cycling
DPA
· 26.09.2022
Fabian Wegmann should be in an excellent mood these days. The former professional cyclist and now respected TV pundit is also the sporting director of the Münsterland Giro. And this year, the top teams from the WorldTour are crowding into the race, which is second-class at best internationally.
Relegation battle in cycling in full swing
Ten teams from cycling's elite league will be at the start on 3 October. That's twice as many as last year. The reason is as mundane as it is life-threatening: the relegation battle has broken out in cycling.
"For some teams, it's all or nothing," says Wegmann. What he means: Only the best 18 teams in the world qualify for the WorldTour for another three years and thus automatically for the most important races such as the Tour de France. There are sponsors in cycling, which is so heavily dependent on sponsors, who are only involved in France because of the summer advertising space. As there are currently two second-tier teams in the top 18, two established World Tour racing teams would have to be relegated.
UCI three-year ranking
One criterion for participation in this elite club is the UCI's three-year classification. The problem: many teams apparently only realised at the beginning of the season that they are now in the final year of the period. At the moment, the Belgian Lotto team with Roger Kluge and the Israel-Premier Tech team with four-time Tour winner Chris Froome are in 19th and 20th place, so three weeks before the end of the season on 18 October, people are hitting the panic button.
Walscheid not allowed to attend the World Cycling Championships
Max Walscheid from Heidelberg was banned by his team Cofidis from riding in the World Cycling Championships to defend his mixed time trial title in Australia. "My team wants me to stay in Europe and chase UCI points," said the 29-year-old. Instead of Australia, the speedy man rode the Grand Prix d'Isbergues in France and the Omloop van het Houtland Middelkerke-Lichtervelde in Belgium.
The fact that the teams send their best riders across the villages and thus to races such as the Münsterland Giro is due to the system's points distribution, which is as complex as it is questionable. There are 200 points for a victory in Münster, but only 120 points for a stage win in the Tour de France, for example. Simon Geschke was rewarded with just 50 points for his hard-fought second place in the Tour's mountain classification. "There are people who develop algorithms to work out which races are most likely to score points," said Rolf Aldag, head of sport at the comfortably rescued racing team Bora-Hansgrohethe Sports programme.
Froome team severely jeopardised - owner threatens UCI
And to make the situation even more bizarre, the top teams are not even necessarily competing for victory in these races. Three riders in the top ten could score significantly more points than one winner. Last year, the Quick Step-Alpha Vinyl team scored 375 points in Münster with five riders in the top 20. "The rule comes as no surprise," says Kluge, who is directly affected by the relegation battle, to the F.A.S. "You often hear in the field that we should take over the pace work at the front because we have to in order to save ourselves."
Around 900 points currently separate Kluge's Lotto team from the Arkea team, which is in the last non-relegation place. That is already a huge deficit, but it can be made up. The Israel team, on the other hand, is already 1000 points worse than Lotto and can hardly be saved. Their owner, the billionaire Sylvan Adams, has already threatened to sue and spoken of a "bastard system". And Jonathan Vaughters, team boss of the 16th-placed EF Education team, said: "In cycling, it's not promotion/relegation, it's promotion/death."
Will the UCI buckle after all?
Rumours are currently circulating that the UCI could relent and increase the number of teams to 20 for three years. The coronavirus pandemic could provide a reason for this. Almost every team has had to withdraw one or more riders from a race in the past two years due to an infection - and lost potential points as a result. However, with the exception of one team, we would be back at the same point in three years' time. What is needed is a parallel revision of the system.
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