With the 2024 road cycling season practically over, the teams are already starting to think about the 2025 campaign, which has the peculiarity of being the second time that the World Tour licenses will expire.
Only the best 18 teams on the international calendar will manage, on the one hand, to maintain the category and, on the other, to move up to it from the Pro Tour. Let’s take a look at how the picture looks.
It’s back to the game of points and which teams will keep the World Tour category for the next three years 2026, 2027 and 2028 with a panorama of real tension at the bottom of the classification where several teams, after a couple of very discreet seasons, will face a very complicated panorama next year if they want to keep their place in the highest category of cycling.
Starting at the top of the rankings, UAE Team Emirates is obviously at the top, with Tadej Pogacar’s 25 top-level victories alone being enough to make it the best team of the season. It stands out at the top of the standings
in a remarkable ninth place at the time of writing this from Lotto-Dstny, who are part of the Pro Tour category after losing their top-level license in the previous three-year cycle.
Something similar is happening to the other team relegated at the time, Israel-PremierTech who will start 2025 comfortably installed in 14th place so, as long as they have a regular season they should have no problem earning a place among the top 18 teams in the world.
So, if two Pro Tour teams have their places fairly well in hand in the next World Tour license validity cycle, which teams will be the ones to give up their places? This is where we foresee a 2025 with a dogfight for every point as we find several teams that once enjoyed a high level, now fighting for permanence.
In the danger zone, occupying positions 16 to 18, we find Intermarché, DSM and Cofidis, who have gone rather unnoticed over the last year, and just below them, the first team to lose the category, Arkéa-B&B Hotels. It is followed by one of the revelation teams of this cycle, the Norwegian Uno-X Mobility that will fight until the last moment for the dream of the maximum category.
And right behind him is Astana, one of cycling’s historic riders after several years in which it has fallen into absolute irrelevance. 2025 will be a very tough year for them as they have a lot of points to recover.
We will have to see if the letter of the new Chinese investor who disembarks in the Kazakh formation has an effect in the form of signings and means to be able to overcome a situation that is tremendously complicated. Undoubtedly, one more incentive to follow next season in detail.
Source: www.brujulabike.com