Blog - UCI ProTour

The UCI WorldTeams (UCI WorldTour) for 2018 and the other teams

The year is about to come to and end. That seems to be the perfect moment to catch up with the UCI's decisions about the registration of the UCI WorldTeams for 2018, the teams which will participate in all UCI WorldTour races. At the same time we'll have a look at the second division teams, the Pro Continental teams.

The 18 UCI WorldTeams for 2018

The Tour de France 2018 will start one week later .. and with less riders!

It was the surprise announcement made by the UCI yesterday and it was confirmed to velowire.com by A.S.O. today: the Tour de France 2018 will start one week later than planned and it will thus take place from 7 till 29 July 2018. Furthermore, the UCI announced that the number of riders will be reduced to 8 instead of 9 per team, as asked for by A.S.O. for 2017 already ...

The dates of the Tour de France 2018: from Saturday 7 till Sunday 29 July 2018

One less rider in the Grand Tours (TDF, Vuelta, Giro) and the classics .. or not?

Through a common press release sent out on 25 November around 7PM, the three big cycling race organisors:
- Amaury Sport Organisation (A.S.O., organisor of the Tour de France, Paris-Nice, Paris-Roubaix, the Critérium du Dauphiné and Paris-Tours to mention just a few),

- RCS Sport (the Italian organisor of the Giro d'Italia, Tirreno Adriatico, Milan Sanremo and Il Lombardia for example) and

- Flanders Classics (the Belgian organisor of numerous classics: Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Dwars door Vlaanderen [A travers la Flandre], Gent-W ...

The 18 UCI WorldTeams for 2016 and the other teams

As usual at the end of the year, the licence commission of the International Cycling Union (UCI) gave its verdict a few weeks ago, thus awarding the UCI WorldTeam level to 18 teams, but also awarding the Pro Continental status for the teams of the second division and the Continental status for the teams of the third division.

In this article you'll mainly find the list of UCI WorldTeams but also some information about the two other divisions!

The UCI WorldTeams get a licence for one or more years and these licences are awarded based on sports, financial, ethical and administrative criteria which are evaluated every year, even if a team still has a vali ...

The 17 UCI WorldTeams announced for 2015: OK for Astana, not for Europcar

While the UCI announced 15 teams which had been qualified to receive a "UCI WorldTeam" licence for 2015 early December, allowing those teams to participate in the UCI WorldTour race, the status of the Astana and Europcar teams remained to be confirmed.

The UCI promissed to provide the answer on 10 December latest and that's what they finally did late Wednesday night when we discovered that the Astana team was rewarded the licence while that's not the case for the Europcar team! Therefore, we'll have only 17 teams in the first division in 2015 and not 18 as usual.

The UCI WorldTeams (apparently the new name of the first division teams) obtain a licence for one or several years and these licences are awarded based on sports, financial, ethical and administrative criteria, kno ...

The reform of professional cycling: the latest news

The last time we provided you with information about the the reform of professional cycling 2015-2020 was in April 2014, following the publication of the first edition of the "reform info" newsletter.

Since then, we had the right to a complete radio silence about this topic, even though this is of interest for all actors of professional cycling, including the fans in the first place.

In the most recent communication by the UCI we didn't get any further details, but velowire.com was able to find some further information anyway, which you can find exclusively in this article.

The reform of professional cycling 2015-2020 goes on in the shadow

The 18 UCI ProTeams for 2014

While you recently discovered the renovation project of professional cycling which entirely changes the UCI WorldTour and the status of a UCI ProTeam, the UCI this week announced the list of 18 UCI ProTeams for 2014.

Below you can discover which teams wiill participate in the most important races next year!

The UCI ProTeams get a licence for one or several years and these licences are awarded based on the criteriia sports value, financial, ethics and administrative, knowing that these criteria are evaluated every year, even for a team which still has a valid licence. If you'd like to know exactly how it works, you can check out the article ...

The renovation of professional cycling, bringing cycling to death?

A few weeks ago, several websites mentioned the overhaul of professional cycling based on a project presented by the UCI at the occasion of the World Championships in Florence last September. These websites then mentioned cicloweb.it as the source of the document and one could think of a leak but ... that was not at all the case!

Now the project has been presented in the different regulating bodies of cycling in the different countries, velowire.com would like to have a critical look at the project ...

The source of the official document about the renovation

The 18 UCI ProTeams 2013 officially announced

While you might have discovered all secrets of the selection procedure for UCI ProTeams on velowire.com yesterday, it was this Monday that the UCI announced the verdict handed over by the licence commission.

While everyone thought the choice for the last three place would be amongst the 4 teams placed from the 16th to the 20th places (except from Europcar which wasn't a candidate), these thoughts were based on nothing and were ignoring that the other criteria -as you've seen in yesterday's article- have the same weight as the sports criterion!

In this article you'll discover the final list of UCI ProTeams for 2013, with Katusha Team being left out and Team Argos-Shimano being the new entrant!

The 18 UCI ProTeams for 2013

The selection procedure of the UCI ProTeams explained - infographic!

We're still waiting for the list of 18 UCI ProTeams for 2013 to be announced (one shouldn't think that is surprising since the final official list is always announced in the second week of December and the UCI always announced 10 December as the official date for the 2013 list; what is surprising however is that the UCI didn't announce any early decisions around 26 November as they promised during the selection procedure), but we should soon find out which teams will be part of the top level teams in 2013.

While we're waiting for that final list, velowire.com thought it would be a good idea to have a more detailed look at the selection procedure since all aspects of it don't seem to be clear for many people! This article's infographic* is trying to give you a better idea about how it works and why some teams have to defend their licence before the licence commission while others don't.

How are the teams selected?