Is UAE the best cycling team in history?

The 2025 season of UAE Team Emirates-XRG is breaking records. With 72 victories accumulated by mid-August and 15 titles in stage races, the Emirati team has become an almost unstoppable machine that dominates in all terrains and shares the spotlight among no less than 20 different riders. Now they are on the verge of a historic record of victories.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG, on the brink of making history: 2025 could be the year of the absolute record of victories

The team's goal, with a few months left in the season, seems clear: to break the historic record of 85 wins in a single year held by Columbia-HTC since 2009. Back then, the American team set their mark with a sprint artillery led by Mark Cavendish (23 wins) and André Greipel (20). The difference is that UAE does not depend on a single type of rider, but wins in classics, grand tours, time trials, reduced sprints, and mountain finishes.

From the first victory of the year, achieved by Jhonatan Narváez in the Santos Tour Down Under, to the recent double by Brandon McNulty in the time trial and overall classification of the Tour de Pologne, UAE's season has been a constant succession of successes. Tadej Poga?ar leads the statistics with 16 victories, followed by João Almeida and Isaac del Toro with 9 each, and Juan Ayuso with 6.

But the real strength of the team lies in its breadth: almost 70% of its roster has already won at least one race this year, matching the modern record of Mapei-Quick Step (20 different riders winning in a single season). There are even cyclists who are close to their first victory, like Rui Oliveira, who was disqualified after winning in Slovenia.

 

 

 

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UAE has won 9 out of the 12 WorldTour stage races held so far. Only Paris-Nice, Catalunya, and the Giro d'Italia escaped their control, although they still made it to the podium. In the Tour de France, Poga?ar secured one of his most solid victories, also taking three stages.

And there are still a few months full of races ahead where UAE could harvest many victories, such as the Vuelta a España, the Canadian classics, the World Championships in Rwanda, Il Lombardia, and a series of minor races where the team usually takes advantage to add to their tally.

In 2024, they fell just four wins short of the record, with 81. Now, with almost three months of competition ahead and a calendar full of scheduled races, surpassing Columbia-HTC's 85 victories seems more a matter of time than possibility. Even with a season-ending at the current pace, it wouldn't be far-fetched to think of approaching 100 victories, something never seen in modern cycling.

In a sport accustomed to the alternation of winners, UAE's dominance raises questions: is it good for the sport that one team monopolizes so many victories?