After the controversial WorldTour relegation of 2022, the UCI has amended its ranking system for 2023, as well as handing something of a reprieve to Israel-Premier Tech.
The Israel-Premier Tech team were one of two WorldTour outfits, along with Lotto Soudal, who will drop down to second-division ProTeam status from 2023, with Alpecin-Deceuninck and Arkéa-Samsic replacing them after earning promotion to the sport's top tier.
The system was based on a three-year ranking, from 2020-2022, but the weighting and allocation of points proved controversial and the governing body has now looked to make the system fairer.
Furthermore, it has looked to assuage Israel-Premier Tech by offering the team guaranteed invites to WorldTour races, with the exception of the three Grand Tours.
The points system proved unpopular with a number of riders and teams, and not only those in the relegation fight. The main area of complaint was the seeming imbalance between points available for the different levels and types of races, with a notable weighting towards one-day races and little on offer for stages within a stage race. For example, a stage win at the Tour de France netted 120 points, while a win in a third tier 1.1 one-day race, such as Heistse Pijl, carried 125 points.
Relegation-threatened teams soon cottoned onto this and changed their strategies to target races that were most lucrative in terms of points rather than prestige, often looking to place multiple riders in the top five as a greater priority than winning with one.
After discussions with teams, the UCI has now changed the system for the next three-year points cycle, from 2023-2025. The governing body has yet to officially add the specifics of the new points scale to its regulations but issued a press release on Friday to outline the changes.
There will be more points on offer at the three Grand Tours, both for final overall results and individual stages. There will also be a separate category and increased importance for the five Monument one-day races: Milan-SanRemo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and Il Lombardia.
As for the other stage races, there will be more points available across individual stages of WorldTour and ProSeries events, and more positions eligible to score points. Finally, there will be more points available for lower finishers in the UCI Road World Championships and Olympic Games.
There is also an important change in that no longer will a team's points tally be limited to its top 10 riders, but now to its top 20, which is the minimum squad size for second-division teams.
"These changes, which will serve to widen the gap between the points scored in the most prestigious races and those in lower categories, are aimed at encouraging teams to enter their best riders in the most important races and to ensure a better correlation between the points awarded and the sporting achievement involved," read a statement from the UCI.
"This increase in the number of riders is designed not only to better reflect the competitive strength of the teams, but also to reduce the downside of their best riders being unavailable for any reason. An increase in the number of riders whose results are taken into account will help to reduce the pressure that is currently imposed solely on a limited number of them, and which can lead to a series of negative consequences (risks of injury, excessive numbers of race days, temptation of doping etc)."
At the same time as launching its new points system, the UCI had a peace offering for Israel-Premier Tech, whose boss Sylvan Adams launched a tirade against the relegations system and threatened to take the UCI to court.
UCI president David Lappartient resisted calls for the WorldTour to be expanded to 20 teams as a one-off, but has now given the team a small consolation. They will not have automatic Grand Tour invites, and so their Tour de France participation remains in doubt, but they will now have access to the rest of the WorldTour calendar.
This is similar to the existing rules that have given Lotto Soudal automatic invites to all WorldTour races as one of the top two ProTeams from 2022, alongside TotalEnergies. Israel-Premier Tech scored lower than both those teams in 2022 and so only had access to one-day WorldTour races, but now that includes week-long stage races.
"This modification is aimed at maintaining stability within teams, and is limited to one transition year – i.e. only for 2023, coming as it does after three years of significant upheaval due to the global pandemic," read the UCI statement.
Israel-Premier Tech, therefore, have only missed out on access to the three Grand Tours as a result of their relegation. With Lotto Soudal and TotalEnergies both turning down their Giro d'Italia invites, the team have a good chance of riding the Italian Grand Tour. As for the Tour de France, their two stage wins from 2022 plus the presence of four-time winner Chris Froome, make them strong contenders for a Tour de France berth, alongside the up-and-coming Uno-X and Euskaltel-Euskadi, who are the home team for the Basque start.
