As the countdown to the 2024 season gathers pace, Cyclingnews looks at some of the key storylines that will define the coming year in cycling.
Even after Visma’s loss of a key rider in Primož Roglič – the biggest transfer news of the last few months, UAE Team Emirates and Visma-Lease a Bike will likely remain the dominant two teams in 2024. However, Bora-Hansgrohe, who nabbed Roglič, have a probable infusion of capital from Red Bull and are striving to overtake them, as are Lidl-Trek, who invested heavily in the transfer market.
The shift of riders across teams doesn’t always lead to a like-for-like change in rankings, but Cyclingnews looked at each rider’s 2023 individual ranking points and tallied up the top 20 riders of each of the new teams to calculate a pseudo-current ranking.
Crunching the numbers doesn’t reveal all, but it does give some key points of discussion and prediction for the 2024 WorldTour.
The 2024 team rosters are not entirely complete, and there is a long list of riders still to announce their teams for the year, but the majority of the teams for the important players have been decided.
Bora-Hansgrohe the big winners
Of all the teams in the WorldTour, Bora-Hansgrohe stand to benefit most from the influx of riders for 2024 – most notably, Primož Roglič from Visma. The German team had slipped from fourth in the world to 10th between 2022 and 2023 and needed that boost. The inclusion of just these two riders brings them back on par with Soudal-Quickstep just below the top two powerhouses.
It’s not just Grand Tours, either. Adding Sam Welsford as a sprint replacement for Sam Bennett, who departed for Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale gives the team more opportunities in the Classics and is a nice complement to Jordi Meeus.
The German team made smart choices this year – even if they did let Cian Uijtdebroeks slip through their fingers – and could well shake up the UCI Team Rankings by season’s end.
Lidl-Trek gain depth
Lidl-Trek could surpass Soudal-Quickstep and Ineos Grenadiers and join Bora-Hansgrohe in the top four in 2024 after signing a raft of riders who were successful in 2023, including Andrea Bagioli from Soudal-Quickstep, Tao Geoghegan Hart from Ineos, and Jonathan Milan from Bahrain Victorious.
They’ve also picked up some solid riders in Patrick Konrad from Bora-Hansgrohe, Simone Consonni from Cofidis and underrated riders Carlos Verona from Movistar and Sam Oomen from…
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