UCI points system is deciding the 2023 team calendar

Even though the next World Tour licensing cycle is three years away, the teams do not want to leave everything to the last minute again and they are putting together seasons aimed at achieving as many UCI points as possible right from the start. Lotto Dstny and Israel-PremierTech start the season determined to return to the World Tour at the end of the next cycle.

The need for UCI points makes Lotto-Dstny decide to renounce the Giro d'Italia

After the exciting battle to avoid relegation from the World Tour, in which Lotto-Souda and Israel-PremierTech finally had to cede their top-flight licenses to Alpecin-Deceuninck and Arkea-Samsic, a new journey begins over the next three years in which the process will be repeated: only the 18 teams that score the most UCI points during this period will be entitled to the World Tour license for the following three-year period.

This battle has already conditioned the calendar of many squads during the past season, many opting to diversify their participations and opting in many cases for .pro or .1 level races where they had more possibilities to add points to their account than in World Tour events where the level is much higher.

A situation that has made many previously unnoticed roads gain importance and promises to be repeated in the 2023 season.

Such is the case of Lotto-Dstny, which has just confirmed, despite having the right to participate, that they will not take part in the next Giro d'Italia for the first time in the last 20 years. Instead, they will focus their efforts on those second and third category races we mentioned earlier, which open the door for them to score a lot of points, instead of mortgaging everything on a difficult stage win in the Giro.

Precisely the scales established to distribute the points have been one of the main criticisms of the scoring system established by the UCI which, however, has meant that races that barely managed to stay on the calendar, have gained some relevance that will allow them to continue to maintain their organization.

In addition to points for possible promotion, it is also important for teams like Lotto or Israel to be among the top Pro Teams in 2023. The top two teams in this category each season automatically get a Wild Card to participate in all World Tour events, which for 2023 are Lotto-Dstny and Total Energies. Meanwhile, the third-placed team, Israel-PremierTech in 2022, only gets an invitation to the one-day World Tour events, so its participation in the Grand Tours depends on one of the invitations issued by the organizations.

A clear example of the importance of the annual classification has been the performance of Alpecin-Deceuninck in recent years, which, thanks to leading the Pro Team classification in recent years, has been able to be present in all the leading races without limitation as if it had effectively been a World Tour, a condition it has finally signed this year, although it has had to incorporate Deceuninck as a sponsor to meet the economic requirements of the category.

For the moment, only Lotto-Dstny have declared their intentions to pursue maximum points from the start, although it should come as no surprise that other squads, including WorldTour teams that have suffered the threat of relegation this year, will opt for the same strategy. An alternative calendar that, for example, allowed Movistar Team to shine in the last part of the season and, together with the remarkable podium result achieved by Enric Mas in La Vuelta, to secure the World Tour license without the hardships that were predicted at the end of the Tour de France.