Movistar | UCI Points: Relegation drama changes plans

August begins, the cycling season enters its last two and a half months of competition and all the usual races at this time are joined by an incentive that this sport has never had before: the fight to remain on the World Tour. At stake is to continue being part of the select group of the best eighteen teams in the world squad or fall into the Continental category, with the risk that this entails of not being invited to the most prestigious races on the calendar and falling into oblivion.

This reform of the UCI was announced by its top leader David Lappartient in 2018 and began in January 2020, with the aim that the eighteen teams that achieve the most UCI points in the three-year period between 2020, 2021 and 2022 would have the right to renew their World Tour license or, in the case of Continental teams, register to access it. Although it was something already known by the teams, it was not until this season, with the water up to their necks, that they worried and tried to build the most productive calendar possible to accumulate the necessary points to save the category.

This last question is important because each type of race has its own points and only running the World Tour, unless it is a leading team, does not guarantee maintaining the category comfortably. Ayuso, for example, got 125 points on Sunday with his victory in Getxo, five more than those corresponding to the winner of a stage in the Tour and twenty-five more than in the Giro and Vuelta.

There are currently eighteen World Tour teams, but due to the good performance that Mathieu van der Poel’s Alpecin and Nairo Quintana’s Arkea, Continental teams, have had in recent years, there are two World Tour teams that are going to be relegated and will no longer belong to the elite for the right to enter that the two mentioned will win. The two virtual descendants are Israel, with 12,684.66 points, and Lotto, with 12,842. Israel, despite its good Tour with two stages and three third places, added only 355, 45 less than those accumulated by Evenepoel in the Clásica San Sebastián.

738 points on burning

Movistar has gone from more to less in this triennium and Gorka Izagirre’s words over the weekend warned of the critical situation that the historic Navarran structure, the oldest on the World Tour, is experiencing. “It’s getting complicated and we’ll see how things turn out. We just have to unite, work and row all together ». Located in the last place that gives the right to maintain the license, it is 738 points above Lotto Soudal, its main threat.

Is that a lot of points? It is a distance that cannot be closed overnight, but Unzué and company do not have to be calm at all. Simon Yates, for example, scored 404 points last week after winning the Clásica de Ordizia, the general classification and a stage of the Vuelta a Castilla y León and being sixth in the Clásica. The main asset of the Lotto is the 20-year-old sprinter Arnaud de Lie. He has seven wins this season and his program is full of classics.

With this scenario, the looks are going to expand beyond the Vuelta. Movistar will bet on making a good overall with Enric Mas in the home race, where 850, 680, 575, 460 and 380 points will be distributed to the top five. Neither Cortina nor Aranburu will be there, hunting for points in one-day races such as the Canadian events, the Brittany Classic or the Italian ones in October. Being ninth in Montreal or Quebec, a feasible position for the ezkiotarra, gives the same points as a stage in the Vuelta, much more difficult to achieve.

However, not all cyclists can contribute their grain of sand to the cause. Only the points of the ten best riders of each team count for the sum, so the 66 that Oier Lazkano achieved in the Tour of Wallonia are not reflected for now in the Movistar global classification as he is not one of the ten best placed in Template.