Battle for 2023-2025 WT licenses

[Logic-is-your-friend]

Good day for Lotto in Leuven. 185 points.

 

[Monte Serra]

Good day for Lotto in Leuven. 185 points.

Unfortunately, De Buyst is not among Lotto's best ten riders this season. So his points currently don't help in their fight against relegation.

https://www.procyclingstats.com/team/lotto-soudal-2022/results/uci-world-teams

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

Unfortunately, De Buyst is not among Lotto's best ten riders this season. So his points currently don't help in their fight against relegation.

https://www.procyclingstats.com/team/lotto-soudal-2022/results/uci-world-teams

Still a good day if not as good as previously thought!

 

[Bonimenier]

Good day for Lotto in Leuven. 185 points.

Van Moer and especially Vermeersch not sprinting at the end shows that they don't understand the urgency of getting points imo. They didn't have to ride at all as soon as Campenaerts was away, so they should have been able to sprint.

But yeah, still a good day for them.

 

[pman]

What's happened to Movistar the last 3 or 4 years has just been unbelievable. I just can't fathom them losing world tour status, even if they get the wild card spot. Wow. It'll be interesting down the stretch.

 

[tobydawq]

Well, if Lafay can hold on to yellow tomorrow, which doesn't seem unlikely (nor a done deal, to be fair), Cofidis will have had quite an amazing week with GC wins both in the Tour de l'Ain and in the Arctic Race. That would practically take them out of the risk zone.

 

[Valv.Piti]

What's happened to Movistar the last 3 or 4 years has just been unbelievable. I just can't fathom them losing world tour status, even if they get the wild card spot. Wow. It'll be interesting down the stretch.

Carapez left because Movistar got backstabbed. Lopez decided to backstab himself instead, going to Astana. Mas crashed out of virtually every race, and you simply cannot depend on 42 year old Valverde to collect points for 20 riders anymore. Then riders like Ivan Sosa turned out to worst case in terms of his projection, you cannot seem to get your hands on any of the talented spanish riders, and voila, Movistar 2022, a quite pathetic team.

 

[tobydawq]

Well, if Lafay can hold on to yellow tomorrow, which doesn't seem unlikely (nor a done deal, to be fair), Cofidis will have had quite an amazing week with GC wins both in the Tour de l'Ain and in the Arctic Race. That would practically take them out of the risk zone.

I see now that Lafay is only the 11th most scoring rider of the team. He will break into the top 10 if he wins tomorrow but he will not give them as many points as if he were there already.

 

[Kaptain Kool]

Carapez left because Movistar got backstabbed. Lopez decided to backstab himself instead, going to Astana. Mas crashed out of virtually every race, and you simply cannot depend on 42 year old Valverde to collect points for 20 riders anymore. Then riders like Ivan Sosa turned out to worst case in terms of his projection, you cannot seem to get your hands on any of the talented spanish riders, and voila, Movistar 2022, a quite pathetic team.

If MAL just finished the Vuelta last year, wouldn't that be another 260 or 320 points? That plus Mas finishing his WT races this year and Movistar would about equal with Arkea Samsic. It's been the perfect storm of all of their big riders minus Valverde failing.

I've seen interesting recent interviews with Ivan Garcia (acknowledges that the team doesn't trust him in big races) and Unzue saying something like it's obvious Mas isn't cut out to be a leader but things will change once the young Spanish riders are out of contract in a couple of years. That was before Ayuso renewed thru 2050 and I'm not sure Arrieta is realistic, so perhaps their plan is to hope they can sign Carlos Rodriguez for 2024 and that he gobbles up 4,000 points per year.

 

[Wyndbrook]

I see now that Lafay is only the 11th most scoring rider of the team. He will break into the top 10 if he wins tomorrow but he will not give them as many points as if he were there already.

This dam top 10 scorers only rule keeps spoiling all the fun.

 

[tobydawq]

This dam top 10 scorers only rule keeps spoiling all the fun.

I don't necessarily think that rule is stupid but it does keep it quite hard to follow a proper relegation battle.

 

[Samamba]

I don't necessarily think that rule is stupid but it does keep it quite hard to follow a proper relegation battle.

There's definitely some positives about it too.
Like random top 50s in GC not counting as much, or random NCs where there's 5 riders at the start not counting because the rider winning isn't in the top 10. And it obviously also balances the huge budget differences between teams slightly.

 

[tobydawq]

There's definitely some positives about it too.
Like random top 50s in GC not counting as much, or random NCs where there's 5 riders at the start not counting because the rider winning isn't in the top 10. And it obviously also balances the huge budget differences between teams slightly.

Exactly.

 

[Anderis]

I think the idea is so that a team can focus on supporting their leaders properly instead of every rider riding for himself to get points for finishing 18th or something like that. But I'm not sure if that would be that much worse than the situation we have now when the teams ride for guys who already have many points instead of those who are in the best form. It also hurts the teams that have many decent riders instead of few very good and that's not always a matter of having higher budget.
I think the origin of the rule was that some 10-15 years ago riders were complaining that loyal domestiques were having problems finding new contracts because all the teams would rather sign some anonymus guys who scored UCI points in some obscure races instead of those who sacrificed themselves for the leaders and thus didn't score themselves because of how important those points were. So they made that only the points from the best few riders would count so that signing the team player types wouldn't hurt the teams in the rankings. But that was when the system was a bit different and it counted the points the riders had scored prior to joining the team. Now that's no longer the case, so there's no incentive to drop team players for riders who scored points in the past.

As for the battle, I thought EF was slowely getting into the safe zone but they again perform horribly in these small races while other teams in danger get podiums and wins.

 

[Netserk]

It's just like the nation ranking where it's the top-8 that count. I think it's the best framework (no transfer of points and a cap on number of riders that count), but whether the optimal amount is 8, 10, 12 or 15 riders is unclear. I'm more sceptical of three-years rounds (and more fundamentally the amount of WT teams).

 

[Anderis]

For the nation ranking it makes more sense to cap the number of riders because of huge difference in numbers of pro riders from various countries but also the number of races and teams in each country (which makes it so much easier for traditional cycling countries to maintain the high numbers of potentially ranking relevant riders). WT teams roughly all have the same number of riders and ride similar calendars (if they care to get the invites for smaller races).

 

[Netserk]

WT teams roughly all have the same number of riders and ride similar calendars (if they care to get the invites for smaller races).

You also have to take Pro teams into account.

It's easier for a new team to gain entry if fewer riders count. I think that's a good counteract to no transfer of points.

 

[yaco]

It should be decided on points earned in WT races as these are the pinnacle of the sport - Teams racking up points in lower level races is a poor reflection of the sport.

 

[Anderis]

It should be decided on points earned in WT races as these are the pinnacle of the sport - Teams racking up points in lower level races is a poor reflection of the sport.

But how are you going to give the PCT teams a fair chance of moving up?

 

[Billie]

I don't understand why points scored for the national team count.

Also how does it work for stagaires? Do their points count towards the team total? If you sign one of the best u23 riders as stagaire he can easily take 300+ points in Avenir and at worlds. Do those points count toward the team?

 

[Wyndbrook]

I don't necessarily think that rule is stupid but it does keep it quite hard to follow a proper relegation battle.

I don't have a problem with the rule, just makes it too complicated to keep up with my simple brain.

 

[StryderHells]

It should be decided on points earned in WT races as these are the pinnacle of the sport - Teams racking up points in lower level races is a poor reflection of the sport.

Disagree! The point system as is should change but points need to be available at lower level races for a relegation system to work.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

I don't understand why points scored for the national team count.

Also how does it work for stagaires? Do their points count towards the team total? If you sign one of the best u23 riders as stagaire he can easily take 300+ points in Avenir and at worlds. Do those points count toward the team?

No, the points count for his usual team.

 

[Netserk]

Disagree! The point system as is should change but points need to be available at lower level races for a relegation system to work.

The way to make it work would be to have a fixed number of forced relegations from the WT. So as an example to have the least scoring WT team relegated each year.

 

[Samamba]

I dont mind the top 10 rule, maybe top 12 would be better looking at the scorers of most teams (helps the teams who have more decent riders instead of just 2 or 3 star riders a bit more).

The point system needs a overhaul tho. You shouldn't be able to get points out of championships, a team shouldn't have an advantage having riders from countries where it is easy to win nationals or where those riders would be leaders in every continental or world championship (and thus have more chances at points). Worlds should never give points to teams, why would riders of a sponsorteam work for a rider of a rival team to get a huge amount of points. For example, why would Kron work for Cort at the end of the year. It's just weird.

Obviously stage wins in GTs or important WT races should give more points compared to certain small one day races. But most importantly, you shouldn't be able to just farm 20 points in a million easy one day races for just getting top 10s. Make those smaller races more top heavy. You can give the top 8 120-85-60-50-40-30-20-10 points for example, but don't give the top 25 points. It would atleast make things like sprinting with 3 different guys to get them all in the top 15 not worth it anymore. Teams should ride for the win, not for top 10.

UCI should stop pushing certain races by giving them a huge amount of points they don't deserve cause noone is riding them. There's certain .Pro races that give a big amount of points but don't have good riders at the start at all. Then there's certain .1 races that have a better quality field. Same wit WT races. It's complete BS that those 2 Canadian races both are 500 point races, same as a monument lol. If you want a competitive but also fair system you can't be pushing races teams and riders aren't interested in.