Following the announcement of teams registered by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) for the 2023 season, the international cycling body has made some changes for the points structure. The UCI also confirmed that three teams would be downgraded from the WorldTour, including Israel-Premier Tech.
In a statement, the UCI posted that after the three-year cycle, various stakeholders involved in professional men’s road cycling expressed a wish to adjust the existing points scale to attach more value to the most prestigious UCI WorldTour races, and rebalance the respective importance given to one-day races and stage races.
Main changes to the points scale
– Increase in the number of points attributed by the three Grand Tours – the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta Ciclista a España (final general classification, stage and secondary classifications)
– Creation of a special category for the five Monuments (Milano-Sanremo, Ronde van Vlaanderen, Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia) with a greater number of points attributed to them compared with the other one-day races on the UCI WorldTour
– Increase in the number of points attributed during stages of races of the UCI WorldTour and of the UCI ProSeries; in future, points will be awarded for finishes lower than third place (all the way down to fifth, tenth or 15th, depending on the competition)
-Increase in the number of points distributed during the Olympic Games and the UCI road world Championships (road races and time trials in the elite categories)
Additionally, the UCI world ranking for teams, which up until now has been determined by the total points obtained by the best 10 riders in each team, will now be calculated on the basis of the results of the best 20 riders (which corresponds to the minimum number of riders for UCI ProTeams.)
The UCI believes that 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 (for example injury or illness) during a given season. This was one of the reasons Sylvan Adams had hoped would avoid his team being downgraded. The Israeli-Canadian cited COVID-19 as a factor for disrupting IPT’s ability points since 2020.
With the UCI World Ranking for teams acting as the basis for the evaluation of the teams in terms of sporting criteria (for the purpose of awarding UCI WorldTour…
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