The fight to avoid relegation from the UCI WorldTour is in the final decisive month of racing and calculated risks have played a decisive factor in the latest standings.
While Lotto Soudal, Movistar and Cofidis blocked riders from travelling to Australia, other teams took the risk to send riders with their national federations to the UCI Road World Championships with hopes of gaining valuable points.
The World Championships relegation gamble paid off for BikeExchange-Jayco, thanks to Michael Matthews’ third place finish in the elite men’s road race and the resulting 400-point haul, plus 133 points scored by Matthews and Luke Durbridge in the Team Relay time trial. Sprinter Dylan Groenewegen also snatched podiums in Paris-Chauny and Omloop van het Houtland to claim 155 points.
The Australian is now 1243 points above the relegation places with only the Italian Classics and a few other races left to race.
Team manager Brent Copeland was pleased after Worlds, praising the team’s blended strategy.
“We discussed this with Matthew White and the performance group already a couple of months ago. We definitely agreed to support going to the World Championships,” Copeland told Cyclingnews.
“And we also did the calculation on the points and thought we would have a good opportunity to pick up some good points, which did work out that way, so we were really pleased with that.”
It helped that BikeExchange-Jayco’s hopeful for Worlds had the entire Australian elite men’s team backing him. The relationship works both ways, Copeland said.
“Having the world championships in Australia, having Australian riders on the team – that was easier for us to take that decision. But that’s always been the philosophy of this team to support the federations, to support the World Championships – it’s one of if not the most important event of the year and that’s got to be respected.”
BikeExchange-Jayco was sitting close to the ‘relegation zone’ this summer due to Simon Yates‘ abandon at the Giro d’Italia due to a knee injury and then at the Vuelta a España because of COVID-19. The team did not expect to be nervously fighting to secure their place in the 2023 WorldTour.
“We were pretty confident up until Simon got COVID-19 at the Vuelta. We had decided to concentrate on our goals and not to change too much. Whitey did decide to add in a couple of races just to be a little bit more secure, such as Dylan’s podium finishes that he got over the last week.
“We were a bit concerned…
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