The 2026 season has finished and here is a look at the UCI rankings for the year. There’s the three year promotion and relegation contest to note. More immediately we can see which teams are eligible for invites to the major races next year, assuming they’re viable.

The chart shows the top-30 teams, blue are the 18 WorldTeams, red are the second-tier ProTeams.

UAE lead the rankings for the fourth straight year while Red Bull are second, a big gain from sixth last year and with help from Remco Evenepoel and his score of over 7,000 points. Visma-Lease a Bike slip to third, the first time outside the top two since 2021 and are set to go into 2027 as Team Yellow B, the name of the legal entity behind them as there’s no news on a search for a replacement title sponsor yet but they’re undewritten by Dutch billionaire Robert van der Wallen.

Decathlon-CMA CGM are up from seventh to fourth, in part thanks to their nouveau riche status but signing Olav Kooij on a mega contract has only brought 1,600 points after he resumed racing mid-season; Felix Gall delivered double that and Tobias Lund delivered more points than Kooij too, all while Paul Seixas is their obvious big scorer but not yet their big earner as contract talks continue.

Elsewhere Lidl-Trek are a flop in fifth, this is visible in the rankings but see the internation ructions with management this year and the shopping spree they’ve been on lately. XDS-Astana played the system well last year to stay in the top flight and have kept this up.

Netcompany-Ineos finish the season in eighth, their worst position since… well last year when they were eighth too which was their lowest since the UCI team rankings started a decade go.

Uno-X have done well. 11th last year was impressive and gave them just enough points to pip Cofidis for the World Tour but this late promotion could have overwhelmed them. Instead they’ve finished 10th and got some high profile wins, built a foundation to secure them in the coming seasons and all retaining an underdog image.

Alpecin-PremierTech finish 11th. Their top scorer is… Jasper Philipsen who scored 3,665 points compared to 3,404 for Mathieu van der Poel. The pair earned two thirds of the team’s points.

Next come a bunch of teams with little more than a thousand points between Movistar and Cofidis. Movistar owe plenty to Enric Mas who got a quarter of their haul thanks to his Vuelta a España win but also second in Lombardia and more. Kudos if you can know their second-best scorer, it’s Natnael Tesfatsion. EF were lingering in 21st place at times during the year but have moved up only they lose Richard Carapaz and clearly the search for a replacement title sponsor has yet to find one, perilous but Jayco only have one year’s funding from sugardaddy Gerry Ryan to bank on so they’re arguably in even more need of something and a reminder that while these rankings look back at 2026 we need to see the teams as much for what is coming next.

Promotion-relegation
The red line sits between 18th and 19th place and marks the promotion and relegation zone but we’ve just finished the first year of the 2026-2028 cycle. Pinarello-Q36.6 and Tudor look set to join the World Tour for 2029 especially as they’ve made strong signings for next year so ought to score more. NSN will hope that signing Richard Carapaz gives them a boost.

Groupama-FDJ are in trouble but only 500 points adrift, so trouble rather than doom. Saying it’s only one year and there’s time to turn things around may prove comforting but there’s little to suggest they can reverse the trend. Romain Grégoire is a big scorer for them and so they’re at risk if he is injured in the spring; they’ve lost big names like Stefan Küng and Valentin Madouas but the budget has not been deployed on big scorers, much of it gobbled up by contract inflation.

Auto Invites
Assuming 18 teams in the World Tour then under rule 2.1.007 bis the best three teams outside the World Tour get automatic invitations to World Tour stage races and one day events: this is Pinarello-Q36.5, Tudor and Cofidis. These are elective, for example this year Cofidis could have ridden the Giro but declined. But team management has said it intends to do the Giro in 2027, both title sponsor Cofidis and their equipment suppliers all have business interests there.

Wildcards
Under the same UCI rule there are two wildcard invites for a grand tour next year, as long as it makes the top-30 in this year’s final rankings. Alas Bardiani-CSF slipped to 31st at the last minute so a Giro d’Italia without the green-clad squad looks likely for the first time since 2012. Organisers RCS will likely pick among Unibet Rose Rockets, Polti-Kometa, SolutionTech-Nippo-Rali and MHB CSB Telecom Fort. However we shall have to see for the viability of these candidates, Polti may have stopped as a sponsor; Telecom Fort too and so on. RCS doesn’t have to decide yet.

Vuelta a España organisers Unibet have tended to rotate among the Spanish teams and thanks to some eleventh hour wins in Panama last weekend, Euskaltel-Euskadi move up to 29th place and look likely to get an invite, given Mikel Landa as a their new signing. Caja Rural sat out this year’s Vuelta so could start especially as 27th placed Kern Pharma is stopping. But Burgos-Burpellet-BH have been bolstering their squad.

Which teams go to the Tour de France? Total Energies may not survive, more on this below. Unibet Rose Rockets could be a pick especially if they can say “no thanks” to the Giro to better save themselves for July but they don’t have a must-have roster and their selling point of being strong on social media is no asset given the Tour hardly needs a boost here but in the past Christian Prudhomme has used the UCI rankings as a yardstick, it was cited as one reason why Caja Rural got invited this year instead of the Rockets and if so then the Franco-Dutch team qualifies. Burgos-Burpellet-BH have signed French riders from the Total Energies exodus but the Tour is a big ask.

UCI Licence Review
Made sense of it all so far? It’s not certain that the teams cited above are all licenced for 2027. Yesterday evening the UCI published the list of teams applying for next season and there was a gap between the number of teams applying and the amount listed in the press release. Jayco and Picnic-PostNL were missing from the World Tour teams; TotalEnergies absent among the ProTeams. It happens, teams may not be able to send every document ahead of the 15 October deadline and have until December to fix this. We know Jayco’s finances are tight and Picnic-PostNL are struggling on several fronts; the Dutch team got a warning last year from the governing body about its viability already.

Total Energies is the one that looks in real trouble. We know the French oil major is stopping sponsorship having pivoted to fund Netcompany-Ineos. Team founder Jean-René Bernaudeau has talked a good game lately saying he’s lodged a wage guarantee and other paperwork with the UCI but what’s missing is a title sponsor contract. Only this is fundamental to the team’s future. It’s here there’s a Catch-22 scenario because the team is eligible to for a Tour de France wildcard if they can find a main sponsor to keep the show on the road. But this may not be sufficient, if the roster is weak then ASO may just prefer another team. But there’s a prize awaiting: a viable title sponsor, a couple of signings and it’s bonjour to the Tour for 2027 and beyond. This is appealing but these deals typically take years or months to land and there are only weeks left.

Conclusion
These rankings can tell us which teams had a good season or not but they’re also used for next year and beyond. Pinarello-Q36.5 and Tudor are looking like World Tour teams already, their signings for next year consolidate this and they can and will race all the major events in 2027.

Outside of the World Tour there’s a tricky game of musical chairs where only a few surviving teams compete for the places left. If Euskaltel-Euskadi get to ride the Vuelta next year then Gotzon Martín’s win last weekend in the 2.2 Clásica Provincia de Chiriquí delivered this, arguably more than signing Mikel Landa. If teams are trying to game the system and going to far-flung places, well it’s not a bad outcome to populate smaller races as a way of attending the bigger ones.

All teams face two races, the one to win events, land results, earn publicity and with this to get the points they need whether to top the table or qualify for races or the World Tour. The second race is existential, to be a viable team and to stay on the road. Here the promotion and relegation race ahead is fraught because some teams racing this year will no longer be around by 2029 or perhaps earlier.

The post UCI WorldTeam and ProTeam Rankings first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Did you notice the rider protest and eloquent speech calling for improved rider safety and expressing the fear of the risks involved? You might have heard Remco Evenepoel’s version but Dorian Gordon also made an appeal at the start of Paris-Tours on Sunday. It didn’t resonate as much in the media. Both speeches and rider actions were poignant but they were too modest.

“Through these words I’m speaking for all cyclists, male and female. For those still here, but also those who have deceased. As riders we’re unified to denounce the irresponsible behaviour and unnecessary risks we’re exposed to.”
– Dorian Godon (translated) .

A five minute delay with a short speech is at the mild end of the scale. In 1978 a rider strike saw the Tour de France peloton protest half-stages by riding a go-slow and then dismounting to cross the finish line. However that did have an obvious policy outcome that was in the organiser’s power to stop. Things are more complicated now, you can’t write a rule that stops errant vehicles getting onto a race course… but you can write standards, set duties and even impose liability. The peloton might have the power to make this happen but more collective action will be needed, probably stronger measures.

CPA sidelined
Less important but the rider protests happened without the CPA rider union. It’s not crisis time for the union but is telling that this time the riders didn’t bother using it when normally a union ought to offer help for support, planning and so on.

Picnic-PostNL’s “culture of fear”
One thing where a union could act is workplace relations but the CPA seems missing in the news today from Dutch broadcaster NOS and podcast De Waaier that spoke to many inside the Picnic-PostNL team and its various incarnations over the last decade with talk of a “culture of fear” and where managerial hierarchy and strict protocols reach the point where the individuals and humanity seem to be sidelined. The team has responded, promising an independent investigation into this. As if their season could not be worse so far…

Picnic cheer

…but Frits Biesterbos has got Picnic-PostNL their first World Tour win of the season, beating Paul Magnier and Olav Kooij in a bunch sprint. They’d been the only World Tour team without a win at this level and close to ending the season without a win at the top level. Astana did this in 2022 when it only had five wins, two at .Pro level, one at .1 and of course two Kazakh national champs titles. Biesterbos has been making a name for himself – a great name, any more Dutch and he’d be riding in clogs drilled for cleats – with some sprint results and now his first win. He hasn’t popped up for the win by coming off someone’s wheel when racing into a headwind, instead he’s been able to have a lot of power on tap which suggests he can not only win more but also have range for the classics.

Down to the wire

There’s a battle for teams to get in the top-30 on the UCI rankings because only those in this group are eligible for a wildcard invite to the grand tours, so Euskaltel-Euskadi moving up to 29th place is some cheer for them and their marquee signing of Mikel Landa when it comes to starting the Vuelta. There’s a week left and so far Fritz Biesterbos’s win in the Tour of Guangxi and Alessandro Fancellu’s 6th place in the Giro del Veneto yesterday with 80 points imperils them. Meanwhile Bardiani are outside the top-30 and so, as things stand, ineligible even for the Giro next season. The UCI rule in question says teams have to be in the top-30 for this season but this includes teams that may not exist next year so you can make a case for it being re-written; equally the top-30 is a clear metric rather than second-guessing the viability of each team for next year. Final 2026 rankings will be published next Tuesday.

Deadline day
Talking of UCI deadlines, today is the soft deadline for teams registering for next year. Every pro team has to submit details to the UCI by 15 October with details such as their name for the following season, copies of signed sponsorship contracts, the rider roster and more. Teams can miss this deadline if the paperwork really is just days away from being completed but there’s a daily fine for the delay. It’s with this we ought to know whether Visma-LAB have managed to find a title sponsor for 2027, likewise EF’s sponsor search; probably not as neither has held a press release to unveil anything. Similarly we’ll see if the Total Energies team has found a backer for 2027 and beyond because it also appears not – no press release either – and so the team looks destined to vanish, or more likely drop down and continue as a third tier Continental team where it already has the Vendée U-Primeo Energie team. The UCI normally names all the teams involved in the review in a press release a week later with the approval or not due for November but it can stretch to December.

Staying the UCI, it’s announced reform proposals and in a separate announcement has mandated business consultancy Deloitte to help. Just as it did in 2013 when a similar set of reforms were suggested (calendar reform, no overlapping races, shrinking stage race length etc etc) right down to hiring Deloitte to gather feedback and put this into something that could be implemented. You can be forgiven for forgetting that episode as not much came out of it although the three year promotion-relegation system we have today and started in 2020 can be traced back to this. So will more happen this time? Possibly but ideas like shrinking the grand tours down to two weeks have already been shot down by race organisers to the point of why were they even evoked? It’s a challenge explored here before – On Calendar Reform, February 2024 – in that everyone will say yes please to “reform” but start to spell out the changes and you create winners and losers and it gets harder to advance.

Nairoman, no es un ciclista
Nairo Quintana has retired as a rider. An impressive palmarès and a massive personal legacy in Colombia where it’s been hard to overstate his popularity. In part because he represented his roots, once a boy who would rise early to run a vegetable stall, he spoke up on behalf of farm workers and small shopkeepers and also led campaigns for women’s rights and improved road safety. Only there’s a proverbial asterisk here, the trial of Arkéa team doctor Fredy Gonzalez concluded with a conviction but Gonzalez appealed this and there’s no timeline for the conclusion of this case. Which means the UCI, WADA and other anti-doping agencies are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the criminal and civil court cases to conclude before deciding whether to invite Nairo Quintana to a potential anti-doping hearing.

Lavresen’s wardrobe
Normally this blog’s Christmas quiz sticks to road cycling so no point saving this for December: track sprinter Harry Lavresen has just won his 22nd UCI world championship title in the keirin, that’s a lot of rainbow jerseys. Winning team sprint yesterday meant he was on 21 titles which makes him the most-decorated UCI world champion, surpassing the Pospíšil brothers who ruled cycle ball with 20 titles between 1965 and 1998.

To finish, some culture. While reading yet more about the 1989 Tour de France and runner-up Laurent Fignon, a mention that Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki made drawings of runner-up Laurent Fignon, the Oscar-winning film maker and artist is interested in cycling. Going down an internet rabbit hole and then emerging, that’s the image above from 5 July 2009 with the title of “Fignon’s coming”, thanks to Paul from the comments below. One of the recurring themes in Miyazaki’s works is technology and how humans can find a balance between it enabling us but without dependency. Is Fignon escaping from his helmet, sunglasses and race radio or merging with them?

The post Thursday Shorts first appeared on The Inner Ring.

After a gradual, seated acceleration Paul Seixas rises up on the pedals to go clear on the Civiglio climb. This was the moment Il Lombardia was won.

Events began with the peloton in a row of honour to pay tribute to Bauke Mollema, Rudy Molard, Ion Izagirre, Odd Christian Eiking and Pello Bilbao, all starting the last race of their careers. No sign of Primož Roglič, who looks set for another season.

Then a five minute protest by the peloton as riders stayed put on the start line, something that took the organisers by surprise going by their body language. Remco Evenepoel’s appeal on the microphone about rider deaths and vehicles on race route was aimed at race organisers, he spoke in English and got a ripple of applause from the Bergamo crowd. Only in a press release organisers RCS wrote “the riders came together to send an important message, stopping for five minutes to urge all road users to behave responsibly and show mutual respect, both during races and in everyday life,” a rhetorical gap that points to the difficulties for the sport to advance collectively.

A group of 30 was away on the early slopes of the Selvino climb but this was too much for UAE and Decathlon who chased it down. A counter move launched by Uno-X’s Johannes Kulset worked instead, 12 riders and then 14 when two more bridged across. Once upon a time, not long ago actually, the early break would be allowed to build up time and those away might know they were only free for a few hours but they could enjoy the liberty. Here the 14 looked in agony from the start, backs hunched low as they made forceful pedal strokes, struggling to take even two minutes as they crested the early climbs, sometimes shrouded in mist.

Racing to the foot of the Ghisallo climb, the sun was coming out. Out of sight RAI TV reported Enric Mas had stopped in a tunnel because of “un problemo à la Dumoulin“, a label the Giro and Worlds TT winner can’t, ahem, drop. Mas’s stomach problems sounded ruinous for the day but that diagnosis would be proved wrong.

Giulio Pellizzari set a fast pace up the Ghisallo climb but was overtaken by an attack from Visma-LAB as Matteo Jorgenson went clear, taking Quinn Simmons, Brandon McNulty and Christian Scaroni with him. It was exciting to see the Ghisallo play a role but the quartet struggled both to take 15 seconds on what was left of the peloton, and too close in on the breakaway. Having a UAE rider in McNulty meant one less team to chase but Decathlon and Red Bull got the better of them, perhaps in part because McNulty could mark the move too. The world champion was sporting white shorts and it’ll take time to stop seeing him as some kind of body-double for Tadej Pogačar, even if his lively presence today means he’s no impostor.

As the race reached Como the riders cast long shadows, the photogenic “golden hour” started early. The breakaway was down to six riders but still had 1m30s for the first time up the San Fermo climb. Pellizzari led the chasers up the climb, this time all the leaders were close by with Paul Seixas, Remco Evenepoel, Giulio Ciccone, Tom Pidcock, Isaac Del Toro and Brandon McNulty just where they wanted to be.

The breakaway split going up the Civiglio climb with Michael Leonard holding out the longest. Seixas has been labelled a diesel for his way of riding, but on the Civilgio it was as if he was running on bunker fuel. He hit the front but was it an attack? It was almost like watching a container ship leave port, his seated acceleration was barely perceptible on TV. Only his rivals soon felt it, McNulty was on his wheel and started to shake his head, a tell for his agony. It was only a full minute later that Seixas rose up on the pedals. This shook off McNulty and Del Toro. Tom Pidcock moved onto the Frenchman’s wheel, churning a big gear and bobbing to hold on. Another full minute later Seixas stood up again and only Pidcock and Mas could follow with Mas a few metres back. Another minute later and Seixas was clear. Pidcock cracked and Ciccone rotated his head in strigiform manner to observe Mas behind him rather concern himself with Seixas.

Ciccone and Mas were left as chasers while the group behind saw several pre-race picks in trouble. Pidcock said he paid for trying to follow Seixas’s pace, Isaac del Toro didn’t have it and the beefy Evenepoel hypothesis from the preview held up.

Seixas was away but there wasn’t the sense of inevitability. This will come to us the more he does repeats these feats but for now his 20 second lead was only one bad trajectory from coming undone, one exuberant loss of concentration; and given his cramp in the Montreal Worlds, could his legs seize up on the final climb of the San Fermo? He kept it all under control and extended his lead for 48 seconds on Mas who had dropped Ciccone on the San Fermo climb.

The Verdict
More suspense but not a lot more sport. The absence of Pogačar opened up the list of contenders but the race was ridden in the same format with a relentless pace from the start, and 1.5km/h faster than the similar course used in 2022. Matteo Jorgenson’s Ghisallo attack added spice but was a short story mid-race rather than a chapter that led to anything new. It came down to shoot-out on the steepest part of the hardest climb and one rider was clearly superior to all the rest. Seixas even set the record up the Civiglio, taking more than 30 seconds off Pogačar’s best.

Enric Mas is the runner-up again after 2022, impressive when he could have started on the sangria and croquetas following his Vuelta win. Giulio Ciccone seems to improve with age, often an artist on the bike who has frustrated managers for he is proving more able to guide himself to results.

Seixas becomes the youngest ever winner of Lombardia, pipping Giovanni Gerbi who was also 20 when he won the inaugural edition in 1905. The anecdote is worthy, even if it tells us as much about the structure of pro cycling today as it does Seixas, but the context is more remarkable. He started winning in February, won stage races and spring classics in April, crashed out of the Dauphine Aura Tour, finished fourth in the Tour, then aimed for the Canadian races in September and now rides the field off his wheel in October. Beaucoup as they say in France but still only 49 days of racing this year, although he plans to start Sunday’s Roc d’Azur MTB race which will take the count to 50. It’s also Decathlon’s first Monument win, topping second places from Alberto Elli in the 1998 Sanremo, Silvan Dillier’s second place in the 2018 Paris-Roubaix and Seixas’s own second place in Liège this year.

For Seixas it’s a personal triumph. The public self-flagellation following his ride at the Worlds was notable to the point of excessive but he clearly nurtured the sentiment for two weeks as a source of motivation and determination during the past two weeks and was able to deliver on it. Pleasingly though Lombardia was about more than making amends. He took pleasure in his post-race interview, despite years of rising up the ranks, winning at the top level is still a discovery for him. He told TV the 10 year old Paul Seixas would not believe what would happen, and that “the whole season was a dream for me”. Which races will he think about over winter? Or is his goal more personal: to dethrone Pogačar?

The post The Moment Il Lombardia Was Won first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Almost the last chance of the season to land a big win, only now it’s also the first chance for many to win Lombardia given five-time winner Tadej Pogačar is out.

The Course
Bergamo to Como, the long way with 239km, not the hardest route going but still 4,600m of vertical gain. If the start and finish have alternated over the years, the route in between has been more varied. Plus Como will host the finish for the next few years too. This time no Muro di Sormano, instead this vintage resembles the 2022 edition. It’s uphill from the start with the climb to Gavarno via the Colle dei Pasta, a gentle ascent and descent. The Selvino is next, a well-engineered climb with hairpins galore midway. There are no traps on the climbs of the Berbenno, Valpiana and Giovenzana, often big ring climbs.

With 70km to go the climb of the Madonna del Ghisallo begins. It’s in two parts and the hardest part is the start out of Bellagio with some 10-15% sections. It levels out through Guello before a more tame rise over the top to pass the chapel where the bells will ring for the race and then then a twisty descent down to Asso after which the road heads for Como.

There are three final climbs. The road to San Fermo della Battaglia is climbed, then there’s the ascent to Civiglio, then San Fermo again. Of the two climbs, Civiglio is harder but it opens with a long straight ramp up before the ten hairpins starts. San Fermo’s not easy, a tight turn to start with puts anyone ten wheels back in trouble to start with before the narrow road twists up through the woodland.

The Finish
Another time up to San Fermo, a series of 7% ramps winding up to the 5km to go point and then followed by a regular descent with tight bends which flattens out with just over 1km to go.

The Contenders

Absent Tadej Pogačar it’s a far more open contest, would it have been worth doing a preview if he was going to start? Isaac del Toro (UAE) makes for an obvious stand-in, the Mexican is in form even if he has talked about a knee injury this did not stop him going on the attack in Thursday’s Gran Piemonte. Brandon McNulty is a form pick but while he could drift away to open up a gap in the worlds, his rainbow jersey mean’s he’ll be heavily marked, no rider in a race debrief will want to say they let the world champion float away. Jan Christen fits the archetype but his form isn’t as obvious.

Second in Emilia last weekend and the Tre Valle Varesine in the week, Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) looks like a good podium pick and he can sprint well from a group to take the win. At 27 he’s the team’s totemic rider but will see competition on the roster next year with new signings and now would be a good time to land his first Monument.

Giulio Ciccone is likely to be a Pidcock team mate but has a shot now for Lidl-Trek. Smarting from his loss in the Euro road championships, he has a fast sprint and will like the hilly finish but can he put it all together? This would be his biggest win by far. Quinn Simmons thrived in last year’s edition, one of the few to try and resist Pogačar and looks to be in form. Juan Ayuso races, under the radar.

A year ago Paul Seixas (Decathlon-CMA CGM) was a very promising seventh. Now he faces the direct question of how to win? Render the race as hard as possible and then wear down rivals on the final climbs. His team will do their part to sap the field.

Without Pogačar Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) is a deductive pick, the best of the rest on paper and he’s in form. But as we saw the worlds, he is beefier now than July and was beginning to struggle on the climbs; a challenge here with a course backloaded with harder climbs. But he’s far from ruled out, there’s no Sormano to shred the field. It’s just he might have to race tactically, getting ahead of rivals before they trade attacks on the Civiglio; or hoping things regroup. Giulio Pellizzari brings more options but looks to be coming off the boil, there’s a a strong team with Jai Hindley and Primož Roglič.

Visma-LAB have Matteo Jorgenson and Davide Piganzoli (pictured) as leaders and Louis Barré and Ben Tulett as outsiders. Jorgenson’s difficulty is winning from a sprint but this course is selective enough to rarely see a group contest the win. Piganzoli could well be the most improved rider of the year but even so, landing a Monument would be massive.

Enric Mas (Movistar) was second here in 2022 with the very similar route. As good as his form’s been, he can almost be excused for celebrating his Vuelta triumph. Christian Scaroni (XDS-Astana) is consistently good but can he win at this level? EF Education-Easypost’s Ben Healy is a long shot pick but does deliver from time to time. Bahrain have a cohesive team with Pello Bilbao as their leader in his last race, Lenny Martinez has punch, Jakob Omrzel just one to watch and Antionio Tiberi in form but probably deployed to help. Lotto-Intermarché have Lennert Van Eetvelt who is suited to the course and Jarno Widar who’s just won the Tre Valli Varesine. A late season race in Italy means Marc Hirschi can’t be ruled out but this is probably too hilly for him. Oscar Onley (Netcompany-Ineos) is an outside pick. Now that Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X) has found winning ways he ought to land more but this is a tall order.

	–
	Del Toro, Pidcock
	Evenepoel
	Seixas, McNulty, Jorgenson, Ciccone, Scaroni
	Onley, Widar, Healy, Piganzoli, Simmons, Pellizzari, Bilbao

Weather: weak sunshine and 20°C, a pleasant autumnal day and almost no wind to mention.

TV: live from start to finish. KM0 is at 11.00am and the finish is forecast fro 5.00pm CEST. The Ghisallo climb will start around 3.00pm and the finishing climbs around 4.15pm.

It’s on RAI Sport then RAI 2 for locals and VPN users, otherwise Eurosport in Europe, Flobikes in north America and SBS in Australia which is also in English for any VPN users too.

The post Il Lombardia Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.

A look at the Shimano Bike Museum with praise for its focus on bicycles over its own corporate history. For anyone in the Kansai area of Japan, perhaps visiting Kyoto or Osaka, this has a prodigious collections of machines and within a well-designed setting.

The museum itself is striking, a modern building that’s glass and steel. To see pictures of it online is to imagine it might be Shimano’s head office in a prime location, and that there’s a museum inside. However it is all museum, and the surrounding area more ordinary.

“In Japanese, we call a bicycle “jitensha,” which literally means “wheels rotated by oneself.” This means a bicycle is operated by the rider and that there are as many ways of enjoying cycling as there are riders.”

This English text is from the welcome message written on the wall at the start of the museum tour. You might learn the word for bicycle here as you enter, by the time you leave the message of many ways to enjoy cycling will come through. The sign is of course in Japanese too and the museum is bilingual.

Head upstairs and you enter a large darkened room with a procession of bicycles under spotlights. These cover the chronology of the machine, from rudimentary hobby horses to the arrival of pedals, the chain, tires more evolution. This large space also doubles as an auditorium and an educational film is played at times that covers the history of the bicycle and the origins of cycle sport too, all within a wider societal context that touches on war, industrialisation and consumerism.

Then it’s into a bright white room where frosted glass lets in daylight and more spotlights highlight exhibits such as Freddy Maerten’s steel Flandria. You can get close to touch it – not that you would or should – but it’s not behind glass or roped off, just raised on a small stage. You can see the Ishiwata tubing decal and the Shimano Crane rear mech, the beginnings of Shimano in the pro peloton. All the other bikes are similarly accessible. You can see bikes used at Paralympic games and notice the custom modifications up close. A Breezer, one of the first mountain bikes to go on sale, sits there and you can spot a Campagnolo headset and motorbike brake levers among the components on the “clunker”.

As well as history there’s the humdrum. A Crescent bike in the yellow and blue of the Swedish postal service, complete with studded tires to show you can ride on ice, even with a heavy cargo. A very much used Cannondale is loaded with luggage, spare tires wrapped around the bags like boa constrictors, and all caked in dust, as if Tatsu Sakimoto had come in and parked it mid-way during his four year, 55,000km journey around the world. A Merida bike from the 2021 Olympics road race is there, complete with scratches galore and crash dents. The event feels like yesterday but the bike already looks ancient. Plenty of kids bikes feature too, shopping bikes and more. Everyone ought to recognise something they’ve ridden.

Stands explores materials science with a comparison of steel, aluminium and titanium tubing and the chance to feel the weight of these metals yourself. Another lets you pick up racing bike to feel how light it is. But among all this educational material is the simple message that bikes can do plenty.

It’s actually hard to find much about Shimano and its origins here. There’s a mention that gun blacksmiths in Sakai started repairing imported bikes in the late 19th century and soon began manufacture. For what it’s worth the city Sakai has long been a big steel production area, first for swords and then into other goods including guns and cutlery. It’s here that Shimano started too but it’s only later and in passing that you come across a small item that was Shimano’s first product: a freewheel.

Shozaburo Shimano founded the company to make these and one thing led to another. Including fishing freewheels and gearing can be applied inside reels and today one quarter of Shimano’s revenue coming from fishing tackle, about a billion Euros, comes from fishing but there’s not a rod nor reel in sight.

Still the museum is visibly the Shimano museum in other ways. There’s excellent stand where a racing bike has been broken into pieces, apparently there are 3,200 parts in one bike if you really count every chain pin, bolt and electronic circuit component. Of course it’s a Shimano Dura-Ace groupset in the display. Good luck finding SRAM or Campagnolo but there are a few examples, even a Mavic rear mech.

The top floor of the museum includes also a set of display cases for the flagship Dura-Ace and XTR groups starting with the 1973 version, then 1984, 1996, 2004, 2012, 2016, 2021, complete with four empty displays waiting to house 2027 and the rest of what the future brings.

There’s also a library and behind this, a locked archive for researchers. This is valuable, the museum might house one of each type of bike but here the shelves are full of books, brochures and catalogues. A treasure of primary source material. This section marks the end of the tour but you’re free to wander rather than guided to a gift store and the exit.

The Verdict
An enjoyable celebration of the bicycle and a good visual history of the evolution of machines. This might be the Shimano Bicycle Museum, and it is full of Shimano componentry, but this is firmly a bicycle museum with very little about corporate history and no hard sell either. If you want a Shimano t-shirt or some components you won’t find them here.

It covers the history of bicycles and puts the machine first, all sorts sit under spotlights and pleasantly within reach if you want to look at any details up close, from the crinkled cast iron of early bikes to the exploded disassembly of a modern race bike down to the last component.

There are other bicycle museums in the world but many are smaller and have the feel of hobby projects. Sometimes there can be excellent temporary collections in science or art museums, Merckx-Ickx was a fun example. This one works well as a permanent collection – Giant has a possibly similar one in Taiwan – and enhanced by its architecture, it is spacious (4,223m² says the museum spec) and peaceful inside. The top floor with its research archive bolsters all of this.

Access
Sakai is a city about 15km south of Osaka, Japan. It’s a 30 minute train ride from Osaka central station to Sakai or Sakaihigashi stations, the latter is closer to the museum. There’s bike parking of course.

Admission is listed JPY 500 (less than €3) but has the price gone up? I didn’t keep the receipt but a vague memory of having paid more. It’s still cheap if they doubled the price.

The post Shimano Bicycle Museum Review first appeared on The Inner Ring.

The Vuelta a España goes to Andorra today and pleasant weather awaits, 26°C and sunshine. As a ski resort in the Pyrenees it’s an obvious destination for a race with climbs and hotels but there’s a wider ecosystem for much of the pro peloton here. The micro-state has become home to plenty and this is creating a self-fulfilling phenomenon attracting more riders and in turn physios, nutritionists, mechanics, financial advisors and more.

Long before today’s nation states, Andorra was one among many counties, kingdoms, provinces and other divisions of land. The oddity is that it has persisted while all the rest have been folded into what we know as France and Spain today. Being an enclave in the mountains has helped, there few resources to claim and it has not been strategic either, there are easier passages across the Pyrenees to the west and east. Another factor was that in 1278 it became a shared entity with the Count of Foix (in France today) and the Bishop of La Seu d’Urgell (in Spain) appointed as co-princes of the state and the borders set then have barely been changed; today the Bishop of La Seu d’Urgell is still the co-head of state, only now alongside the French President. In the 1990s locals got more of a say with their own parliament.

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The Pyrenees were long exploited by smugglers, moving contraband or more recently trying to dodge tariffs and duties. Andorra got into this arbitrage by more legitimate means. Local tobacco cultivation which continues to this day made it a place for smokers from Spain and France to stock up, then low taxes made it a budget destination. Smokers could enjoy a day trip for skiing or thermal baths and return with bulk purchases of cigarettes. This expanded into a wider retail offer for washing machines, TVs and other big ticket items – bikes too – sold at unbeatable prices because they were tax-free, coupled with the incentive of low duties on fuel meaning the drive from large population centres like Barcelona, Toulouse, Zaragoza or Pau wasn’t as costly either. Some of this retail took a hit because of the internet. Consumers were able to shop around for low prices, benefit from warehousing efficiency and have goods delivered to them. But to this day the VAT rate is 4.5%, while it is 21% in Spain and 20% in France. A box of cigarettes is about €40 compared to €140 in France.

Alas one cycling angle is, or hopefully was, that Andorra’s easygoing retailing apparently extended to pharmaceuticals, including the over-the-counter sale of recombinant-EPO. Just walk in, pay and walk out apparently but this is hard to substantiate today; it could equally have been the result of a crooked pharmacist. Either way it was apparently a destination around the turn of the century for some looking to fill up their fridges with vials of EPO, and save on VAT while doing so.

Onto the more substantial and bona fide angle and Andorra has become a tax haven for riders. In 2006 Joaquim “Purito” Rodriguez moved to the principality. He’s a Catalan by birth so it was close by. He seemed to become an evangelist who attracted others. Or at least the tax rate did the talking. Today many riders are attracted by this, a flat 10% rate applies to income above €40,000. For comparison earn over €60,000 in Spain and the rate is 45% which explains why Girona isn’t the draw it used to be; over the border in France it’s about 33%. The VAT rate matters too as riders billing for services only need add 4.5%.

Another draw is residency. Work visas can be hard to get for non-Europeans but Andorra will grant a VIP residency visa to a cyclist brandishing a pro contract and willing to lodge a €50,000 bond for two years. This simplicity is a big draw for some, perhaps as much or more than the tax rate as getting a visa can be time consuming.

Housing is another attraction. You can rent a three bedroom apartment – one room for bikes and a home gym – for under €2,000 a month. If you have to ask how much this might cost in Monaco then you probably can’t afford it; but €20,000 per month is normal. Or see why many a Monaco pro opts to rent a studio and their home gym is the balcony.

Low taxes, easy visas and housing. The downside to all this is being sequestered in the middle of the mountains. A sprinter just can’t find many flat roads to train on but even a climber doesn’t have it easy either. The Pyrenees are damp, and with the lowest altitude in the principality at 900m it is cold for three out of the four seasons. So whatever the tax saving, the practical difficulties are legion with airport connections further away. Plus it has the dull feel of a retail outlet and ski resort. The solution to this for many is to actually live in Girona while keeping residency in Andorra where being present for 90 days is sufficient. Plus nobody seems to be counting.

If you know of plenty of cyclists who are resident in Andorra, it’s also become home to many others. Indeed the wintry weather is less of a problem for winter sports athletes of course, but those who do motor sports, trail running or or take part in indoor sports have made it home. Plus a growing “influencer”, Youtuber and gamer streaming quotient who just need a cosy apartment rather than the outdoors, indeed the Andorran government is making a big push in e-sports. All this though means there’s a wider ecosystem. Physios, masseurs, nutritionists for athletes, accountants, banking and legal advice for others. There’s an economy growing up around the service of the pro cyclists and others.

Building on this the principality wants to establish itself as as sports and well-being destination with facilities for rehab, hotels with altitude rooms – sleep at 1,500m but adjust the dial to simulate 2,700m – and more.

Conclusion
Once just a drab high altitude retail outlet, Andorra’s become home for many pro cyclists although plenty will say it’s still a drab place. Yes plenty are attracted by the tax rate but housing and visa requirements underpin this, Monaco’s rental rates reserve it for an elite. It’s a regular bidder for the Vuelta and Tour, able to supply hotel accommodation for the convoy but increasingly able to afford it. If the Vuelta was here last year and is back today, there’s every chance it features next year or soon again in the Tour too.

The post High Altitude, Low Taxes first appeared on The Inner Ring.

If you want to save a click, Pogačar.

The Route
“A mountainous Vuelta” is hardly news but the race ratchets up every year and this edition has 58,000m of vertical gain, more than the Giro and Tour. Much of this achieved on a daily basis rather than set-piece high mountain stages.

There are time bonuses of 10-6-4 seconds at the stage finishes. Plus 6-4-2 seconds at the intermediate sprint and also for several mountain passes marked “B” for bonus on the stage profiles.

The Contenders

Tadej Pogačar (UAE) is the obvious favourite to the point where the GC race feels as if it will have all the thrill of tracking a parcel delivery online. We’ll see if Pogačar can take the lead by Andorra and then watch the logistics of the red jersey as it travels around Spain before the scheduled delivery in Granada on 13 September. There’s always the possibility of the package being dropped or lost en ruta but it’s hard to find weakness in Pogačar here. One concern is his lack of preparation, since 1995 and the Vuelta’s switch to the end of summer, the Tour-Vuelta double has only been won once (Froome, 2017). Plenty in the peloton will hope he comes in hot and quickly takes a dominant lead, the better to ensure he can back off in the third week to aim for the Worlds and this leaves opportunities for everyone else. This includes his team mates with last year’s runner-up João Almeida, last year’s mountains winner Jay Vine and 20 year old Pablo Torres. As easy as it sounds for him, there’s a touch of pressure as he’ll want to tick off this win in order to ensure he doesn’t have to come back again and to complete the grand tour triple in the same season as Vingegaard.

The harder part is picking among the other podium contenders. Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) has the record of four Vuelta wins but his record of results in recent races suggests the 36 year old is fizzling out, he’d surely sign today for a podium finish and a stage win along the way, this is a lot to ask for but he can pull it off. His team bring sprinter Jordi Meeus and also puncheur Finn Fisher-Black, with first-year pro Luke Tuckwell worth watching after his impressive Romandie and Aura Tour rides.

Richard Carapaz (EF) is suited to the race but his team are downplaying his chances saying they don’t have much of a squad to support him but the likes of James Shaw, Markel Beloki and Georg Steinhauser can play big roles here with the latter hired in part by UAE for next season to do this role.

Felix Gall (Decathlon-CMA CGM) got a podium in the Giro, gifted with a stratospheric Vo2 Max he’s improved his race craft to become a less volatile rider able to and will aim to do his race again but as good as the Giro was it showed his limits and two time trial stages are a challenge. Matthew Riccitello and Léo Bisiaux ride in support and with Gall set to leave, we’ll see the two younger climbers given opportunities too.

Oscar Onley (Netcompany-Ineos) got a win in the Vuelta a Burgos, a triumph after crashing out of the Aura Tour in July and he could still improve in form since. The challenge for him is the big set-piece mountain stages with longer summit finishes but in-between then he’s a handy rider for sharper summit finishes. Carlos Rodriguez is worth watching too, if only to hope he can find form after seeming to fade over the last two seasons.

Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) was his team’s best rider at the Tour despite losing time on the opening day and working for Ayuso so some consistency and he could do well but backing up after the Tour is hard, especially as his team is built more around Mads Pedersen and Thibaut Nys.

Enric Mas (Movistar) has never finished lower than sixth in his last six Vueltas so would you bet on him finishing inside the top seven this time? He achieves this by riding his own race to the point where it looked like he forgot how to win during the last Giro so he surely won’t trouble Pogačar. Cian Uijtdebroeks starts with a need to reach Granada just for the short-term goal of finishing a grand tour for the first time since 2023’s Vuelta, but also the longer game of building for 2027 by finishing the season.

	Pogačar
	–
	–
	Carapaz, Onley
	Gall, Roglič, Almeida

Vuelta a porvenir
If the names above must feel stoic about their chances of the win against Pogačar, they at least can hope to crowd out the rest of the field. The Vuelta has long been used to give neo-pros the experience of a first grand tour – Pogačar among many – but the hard route compounded by UAE’s pace-setting makes it a tough introduction, there are few obvious “rest days” where the bunch will trundle towards a bunch sprint.

To add to names above like Torres, Tuckwell and Bisiaux, look out for former Avenir winner and youngest rider in the race Jakob Omrzel (Bahrain), Jarno Widar (Lotto-Intermarché), Jørgen Nordhagen (Visma-LAB), Juan Guillermo Martinez (Picnic-PostNL), Darren van Bekkum (XDS-Astana) and new neo-pro Juan Felipe Rodriguez (EF). In a field where a third of the field are eligible for the white jersey there are plenty more names.

Tapas cycling
If the peloton might complain about the relentless route, TV viewers on their sofas have it better. Plenty of stages look lively, many have a climb in the final 30 minutes to spice up the finish so there’s often something to watch to the point where instead of suggesting several stages as must-watch days like a Tour or Giro preview features, it can pay to tune into most days but do this by nibbling on the day’s finish rather than feasting on hours of live.

TV broadcast
It’s on RTVE/tdp for locals and VPN users, Eurosport across much of Europe, Peacock in the US, Flo in Canada, SBS in Australia and the race website lists more broadcasters here. The opening and final stage finish around 7.30pm CEST, all the other days are forecast for 5.20pm CEST.

The post Vuelta a España Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Watching the Femmes at the Tour de France? Do you know what all the team sponsorsdo? If you’ve ever wondered if Suez has something to do with water, or what Laboral Kutxa or VolkerWessels are about, here are some answers.

Visma-Lease A Bike is obvious as it’s the sister team to the men’s World Tour squad, with Norwegian IT services and payroll software specialist company Visma sponsoring alongside Lease A Bike, a company that offers bike leasing services to other companies and their employees that belongs to PON, a Dutch conglomerate that has a big footprint in cycling owning brands like Cervelo, Cannondale and Schwinn.

FDJ United-Suez sees the French state lottery provider and now Europe’s second biggest gambling company alongside Suez which is a French company that has two main activities, waste management and water services, so think of fleets of garbage trucks and recycling plants, as well as reservoirs, piping and sewage. Beyond the two headline names the jersey is notable for more blue chip names like Gan insurance and CB which is France’s answer to Visa payments. Team manager Stéphane Delcourt could teach his French peers in the men’s World Tour some lessons.

Canyon-SRAM is a factory team with German bike brand Canyon alongside US component manufacturer SRAM. The team has just dropped Zondacrypto mid-season after the Polish company vanished taking some people’s savings and has just signed a German retail brokerage platform Scaleable Capital inviting the obvious question of if they’ll scale up investment.

UAE Team l’IMAD is the Gulf state we know from the men’s team. IMAD is the sovereign wealth fund that used to be called ADQ hence the mid-season name change for the team, the fund has been chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the UAE’s national security adviser, pictured with his trademark shades above. As well as spy chief he’s behind many corporate activities and the women’s team shares some of the same backers and links as the men’s team for example Analog is an IT company owned by G42 which has also been chaired by TBZ.

Team SD Worx-Protime has Belgian corporate services company SD Worx which claims to be “Europe’s leading HR, pay and time partner”, so playing a similar role to Visma. Protime is a brand belonging to SD Worx, its a corporate HR service to track and time workers to measure when they are in the office and logging time spent on a workstation.

Movistar is the Spanish telecoms operate Telefonica and its mobile brand and not just with Marlen Reusser today but arguably a team with a consistently better women’s team than the men but because of international recruitment, having hired Annemiek van Vleuten in the past while seeing home talent Paula Blasi go abroad. She has been strongly linked to the Spanish squad but things seem increasingly open at the moment.

Lidl-Trek is the German discount supermarket alongside the US bike brand and a big budget outfit keen to be cited among the top tier teams for both the men and women. The team is owned by Lidl which is interesting because the retailer’s premise is low prices and no frills but here they are spending probably €60 million a year on sport, still small compared to €140 billion in annual revenues but a big frill.

AG Insurance-Soudal is the sister team of the men’s Soudal-Quickstep outfit but think of a step-sister because it has had its own independent history before joining up with the men’s team and while the kit is similar and they share a bike sponsor, it’s a Belgian entity while the men’s squad is run out of Luxembourg. AG does consumer insurance, like car, travel and accident cover while Soudal is adhesives and other chemicals for construction and DIY.

EF Education-Oatly sees Swedish-Swiss language education company EF Education alongside Oatly, an “oat drink” – don’t say milk – company that was also started in Sweden but has since floated on the New York Stock Exchange.

Fenix-PremierTech is led by Italian company Arpa with its Fenix brand, it’s a plastic surface product offering “interior solutions”, think wall or worktop coverings that offer colour and are easy to wipe. The Belgian squad is is the sister team of the Alpecin-PremierTech men’s team but notable because of the different title sponsor for each. They share PremierTech, the Canadian horticultural company that started out selling peat but now offers agriscience products and machinery to plant seedlings and package crops.

Human Powered Health is a US healthcare company that specialises helping to promote athletic health, offering nutritional advice and VO2 max testing for example and a subsidiary of Optum which is itself part of UnitedHealth group, the American health and insurance giant.

Liv Jayco Alula sees Giant’s women’s brand Liv in lights alongside Australian caravan and camping car maker Jayco and Saudi tourist project Al Ula. Like the men’s team, it’s been a pet project of Gerry Ryan who started out backing women’s cycling in the 1990s by personally funding individual athletes to train for the Olympics. His long run as a patron of the team, men and women, could be coming to an end.

Team Picnic-PostNL is a copy-paste of the men’s text, Picnic is a Dutch food retailer start-up that does home delivery, an online grocer and supermarket that is now expanding into France. PostNL is the Dutch postal service. Alas just like the men’s World Tour team it’s also struggling, no wins this season and overtaken by several second tier teams on the UCI rankings.

St Michel-Preference Home-Auber 93 is closing its men’s team to focus on the women. St Michel is an industrial bakery company making madeleines and biscuits which can be found for sale all over France, from supermarkets to railway vending machines. Preference Home is a house building company operating in the Paris area. Auber 93 is the town of Aubervilliers and Seine-Saint-Denis department, long a working class area just to the north-east of Paris where the team has its HQ. It has had a joint men’s team at Continental level but this is stopping to focus on the women’s project.

Cofidis is the French consumer credit company, it started out offering credit to people shopping from mail order catalogues and outgrew the parent business. Just like the men’s team, it has a roster of riders from other European markets it operates in, like Poland, Czechia and Italy. While several teams have men’s and women’s squads, Cofidis is notable as the only sponsor also funding a paracyling team too.

Laboral Kutxa-Fundacion Euskadi is the sister team to the Euskatel-Euskadi men’s team only with Laboral Kuxta they have a credit union as a sponsor of the women’s team, kutxa is Basque for a caja in Spanish. Like other women’s teams, it only has a minority of local cyclists with only a few Basques on the books.

VolkerWessels is a Dutch construction company building everything from housing in the Netherlands to railway infrastructure projects in the UK and reportedly the country’s second largest builder. It’s part owned by the Wessels family with workers also having a share of equity. Construction is not an advanced business but the kit looks like it was designed twenty years ago.

Uno-X is the Norwegian retail company Reitan and its service station business, offering fuel and charging points across Norway and Denmark. While the men’s team is 100% Norwegian and Danish, the women’s team is more international.

Lotto Intermarché Ladies is the full name, the “ladies” suffix does feel like something out of a Bronte novel that could be revised. Lotto is the Belgian state lottery and so by extension the Belgian government with a mission to support women’s cycling in Flanders and Wallonia alike although the roster looks very Flemish. Meanwhile Intermarché is a French supermarket giant that operates across Europe from Portugal to Poland via franchise that buy centrally from the company which itself sources and produces a lot of goods, it has extensive agricultural holdings and Europe’s largest fishing fleet.

Ma Petite Entreprise is French for “My Small Business” and a crowd-funded team backed by small businesses. There are different membership tiers, from individual supporters paying €120 a year to sponsors ranging between “access” entry point of €750 a year to the “pro” tier of €15,000, and there are over 642 of these corporate sponsors. It’s a novel project as an alternative model to the title sponsor system that every other team relies on and interesting because of this.

Mayenne Monbana My Pie sees the Mayenne department of France as the lead choice. With local government in France under pressure to make cuts you can see this may not be an essential service but there’s a logic to it with local politicians wanting to reach people in France to sell their area as a dynamic and active place to relocate. Monbana is a chocolate company located in the Mayenne. My Pie is a French company selling pies, founded by two entrepreneurs who discovered the New Zealand and Australian staple of pies when on a trip “Down Under” and decided to import the idea to France. Getting the French to eat new food may not sound easy but meaty sauce inside a buttery pastry is an easy sell and the business seems to be growing well.

• Men’s Pro Team sponsors explained

The post Women’s Pro Team Sponsors Explained first appeared on The Inner Ring.

A post-Tour look at the team standings to see who is up and who is down.

Two changes at the top. First the UAE team is still in the lead but they’ve pulled out a big lead after “only” having less than two thousand points on RedBull going into the Tour, now they’re over five thousand clear and with Pogačar racing the Vuelta likely to pull further ahead. The other movement is Lidl-Trek overtaking XDS-Astana, the German team enjoyed a successful team while the Kazakh squad found it hard to get a look in.

The grey line on the chart represents the border between 18th and 19th place. Notionally this is the relegation point at the end of the 2026-2027-2028 cycle. It’s far away, and also conditional on there being 18 teams in the World Tour. Pinarello-Q36.5 already look like a competitive World Tour team and signing the likes of Mauro Schmid only bolsters this. Movistar and Lotto-Intermarché might be where they’re expected to be but it’s not a comfortable place.

Thanks to a good Tour EF went into the Tour below the grey line, now they’re well above it with Richard Carapaz scoring over 1,300 points. Cofidis are just above the line but Tudor are close, the Swiss team had a discreet Tour de France but have signed Arnaud De Lie who ought to score big for them next year, the team need this. Marc Hirschi for example only has 308 points this season.

A poor Tour for Groupama-FDJ, around 300 points of which two thirds came from Clément Russo’s stealthy top-10s. They will be worried about relegation, especially as they’re still highly reliant on Romain Grégoire. He’s extended his contract with the team which helps but injury or illness could be ruinous for the team. Valentin Madouas is leaving and you can understand why, he’s only got 120 points this season when he’s been second in the Olympics and the Ronde alike and notionally one of the leaders; the same for David Gaudu with 98 points this season with talk of a breakdown in relations and the team wanting to unload him but he’s got a valid and lucrative contract so in no hurry to leave. Having seen Stefan Küng leave and now Madouas there ought to be some budget for some scorers. House sprinter Paul Penhoët is leaving too.

Picnic-PostNL are in a catastrophic position. Only one win this season is poor but it’s the absence from podiums, placings and other results that is proving so damaging. They’re really missing Max Poole, their stage racing talent, but only three riders in Pavel Bittner, Frits Biesterbos and Bjorn Koerdt have a points score in triple digits, with Bittner the top scorer on 580 points. They’re 4,339 short of Cofidis, to avoid relegation they’re going to need to score at a rate like Soudal-Quickstep just to get back on terms. Fabio Jakobsen could be leaving the team in the coming days

One year rankings 
Everything else being equal* the best three ProTeams this season get automatic invites to the biggest races for next year, so Pinarello-Q36.5, Cofidis and Tudor clear for this award but there’s still time for the Unibet Rockets to close the gap but they can bank on a wildcard invite.

To be eligible for a grand tour a ProTeam has to be inside the Top-30 at the end of the season so plenty of familiar names including Bardiani which has climbed up. But the rule means the likes of Euskaltel-Euskadi and Modern Adventure Cycling are out of the picture now so new Euskaltel signing Mikel Landa may not have the romantic farewell at the Vuelta.

As written before the top-30 rule is based of the rankings at the end of the year which will include teams like Kern Pharma and TotalEnergies and only the first has said it’s stopping and the second is probably going to stop too but no announcement yet so if they won’t exist next year it doesn’t make sense to include them.

* an open question with an uncertain future for several teams, see July’s Race for Survival post

The post UCI Team Rankings first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Years ago “revenue sharing” was all the rage with team managers making public calls for the major race organisers to pay them money. Only even if a race owner felt inclined, when you looked at the data the sums available were small.

Today the calls remain but the sums have changed so time to look again with updated numbers. Especially as it’s been floated by no less than the New York Times, as the screengrab above shows.

The premise of the NYT article (paywall) is that the Amaury family that owns Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) is “thoroughly resistant to change”, mentioning the FIFA World Cup which “is expected to pull in $13 billion, double the sum of 2022’s tournament. It started with more teams and matches; interrupting games with “hydration breaks” that increased the number of television commercials; and enacting “dynamic pricing,” which sent ticket prices soaring” and the suggestion the Tour de France and pro cycling should embrace similar practices

The article also says “The family doesn’t share any of the television rights revenue, reportedly worth more than $170 million a year. That starves the sport of capital that could expand the fan base and leaves cycling in a precarious spot.”

The $170 million comes with a hyperlink to sportspro.com which in turn links to bfmtv.com which uses a €150 million number (roughly $170 million). Only BFM itself says this is an informed estimate, and crucially this is total revenue, as in TV income and hosting fees, the publicity caravan, merchandising and more and cites a number of €150-200m. It’s not the TV rights, but we’re not here to fact check the NYT.

Still let’s take the $170 million. Let’s also assume ASO has no costs, ie no offices, no staff, no suppliers, no tax, and hotels give away rooms in July so that $170 million of revenue is still there, untouched. Now compound that wrong assumption by another where ASO pays out half of this money to teams, a pot of $85 million. Divided between 23 participating teams that’s $3.7 million per team. Nice but it doesn’t get teams out of the “precarious spot”.

Rather than use fourth-hand estimates, ASO does publish annual accounts. 2024, the latest available, show total revenue of €415 million, costs of €284 million and a profit of €131 million, you can see this highlighted in the screengrab above from the accounts filed with the French government.

The government page also helpfully lists the numbers over the years and even plots them in a chart. You can see above how revenue and profits have been growing chez ASO. (For any sticklers, one image has gross revenue of €415m, the other uses net revenue of €375m).

ASO is famous as the Tour de France organiser but promotes other cycling races, you can see the portfolio in the screengrab from the Tour de France website. It also does the Dakar motorsport rally, the Paris marathon, the Etape du Tour ride and more. It was also the organiser for some of the Paris Olympics, handling the cycling, triathlon and open water swimming events, apparently the first time a private company was brought into run part of the games.

Let’s make some more wrong assumptions. Assume the €130 million annual profits all come from the men’s Tour de France. Now imagine half of these profits are paid to 23 teams and it’s €2.8 million per team. Nice again, but even less game-changing and we’re still relying on wild assumptions.

We might as well go full reductio ad absurdum and assume all of ASO’s profits must be paid out to men’s cycling teams: they’d get €5.7 million each.

The average World Tour for 2026 is €33.1 million ($38.7m). So €5.7 million is 17% of the average team budget which could help, but it still doesn’t change the brittle model where teams rely on funding from title sponsors.

If Movistar, Cofidis or EF decided to halt sponsorship today and the structures could not find a replacement in time, €5.7 million would not keep a team afloat it, it doesn’t make the sponsorship model less precarious. Above all, remember to use this amount we’ve used wild assumptions.

If you’re bogged down in numbers by now, let’s step back as the concept sounds bold. Teams owned by nation states, billionaires and multinational corporates want money from company that turns over €415 million? It sounds like reverse redistribution.

The Tour organisers could equally turn around and ask teams for money instead, why not charge a start fee knowing that teams depend on participation, and the money could be re-invested in added safety? Or indeed point out that teams make money because of the Tour de France, if the race did not exist or their teams could not ride then team managers would have smaller budgets to reflect the reduced audience. Audacious? Yes but it’s more rational than assuming all of ASO’s profits come from the Tour, that all of this should be donated to the teams and it would make a meaningful difference.

Conclusion
Revenue sharing is one of those zombie arguments that won’t die. Whether an American newspaper or a social media post, there’s an enduring the sense that ASO should share profits, but often with little follow-up on the actual numbers or distribution because the moment you go from “ok” to “how much?” is when you can see it’s not as obvious as it sounds. Even if ASO decided to donate all its profits to men’s pro cycling teams it wouldn’t alter their brittle sponsorship model.

What’s probably behind the sentiment is the monopoly ASO has on the sport, the way the Tour de France is the dominant event and how this matters for sponsorship but also for control over the sport. It’s less the money, more the position.

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