If the 2023 season was defined most by the success of one team, Jumbo-Visma, and their unprecedented achievements that year, 2024 was all about the exploits of one individual: Tadej Pogačar.
Pogačar’s success left few of the very biggest races for other teams to win, denying many of their primary hopes and goals. Yet in a long season full of ups and downs and racing all around the world, the other seventeen teams in the WorldTour beyond his UAE Team Emirates still found ways to please the sponsors and earn themselves positive headlines.
With the season’s traditional finale Il Lombardia having taken place last weekend, Rouleur looks at each WorldTour member, and considers how content each will be with how their 2024 played out.
ALPECIN-DECEUNINCK – 9/10
Though their total of 26 was a little short of the hauls from the last two seasons, the quality of those wins was what counted. Between them Mathieu van der Poel and Jasper Philipsen won Alpecin-Deceuninck three of the five Monuments, a feat no other team has managed since 2006, and that formidable pair continued to dominate in the Classics and sprints respectively.
Jasper Philipsen winning the 2024 edition of Milan-Sanremo
ARKÉA-B&B HOTELS – 3/10
Only nine wins keeps Arkéa-B&B Hotels very much towards the bottom of the WorldTour hierarchy, but no season can be wholly disappointing that featured (courtesy of Kévin Vauquelin) a stage win at the Tour de France — the first in the team’s history. Luca Mozzato’s unlikely second-place finish at the Tour of Flanders was the other highlight.
ASTANA QAZAQSTAN – 3/10
Astana’s 2024 season will be remembered for one moment alone — that when Mark Cavendish won the sprint in Saint-Vulbas to break Eddy Merckx’s all-time record for most Tour de France stage wins. Doing so had been the team’s defining mission, but the lack of any notable successes elsewhere (Cavendish’s was their only win at WorldTour level) demonstrates how they’ll need to expand next year now Cav’s done with the Tour.
Mark Cavendish winning his record-breaking 35th Tour de France stage
BAHRAIN-VICTORIOUS – 2/10
There was a distinct regression this year at Bahrain-Victorious, whose total of twelve wins is their fewest since 2020. Normally so competitive at Grand Tours, Antonio Tiberi’s fifth at the Giro d’Italia and Santiago Buitrago’s tenth at the Giro were the best they could manage, while Pello Bilbao summed up their season by being…