Fortunato won the Giro’s King of the Mountains (KOM) competition, came 24th in the GC, and finished second on stage 16 for a harvest of 400 points in the race. This puts his UCI points total for the year at 1,134 points. Scaroni finished second in the KOM race, won stage 16, and came third in stage 15, making for a haul of 435 points in the Giro, and 1,306 points for the year.
In addition, Aaron Gate won the Boucles de la Mayenne on June 1, garnering 200 points, all of which have thrust the Kazakh team into 17th place in the UCI Team Technical Rankings, more than 600 points above the team currently sitting in the fatal 19th spot, Cofidis. (Only the top 18 teams in the rankings will receive automatic WorldTour status for the years 2027 to 2029.) That’s quite a turnaround for XDS Astana, which has collected 9,646 points so far this year, bested only by UAE Team Emirates–XRG, Visma–Lease a Bike, and Lidl-Trek. At the end of February, the team sat 21st, nearly 3,400 points behind Cofidis.
This means that Cofidis, which has had a checkered up-and-down history, is flirting with relegation as it continues its run of mediocrity in the Giro. The team came away with a paltry 210 points from the race, 195 of them won by its best rider, the sprinter Milan Fretin. The team currently sits one spot below the safety zone, in 19th place, with 22,504 points, but only 182 points behind Picnic PostNL.
Cofidis has been a UCI WorldTeam since the 2020 season. Its history in the sport has been marked by doping scandals and inconsistent results and dropped out of the WorldTour twice before returning in 2020. It appears that the team is faced with yet another crisis.
Meanwhile, the sponsor-poor WorldTour team Arkéa-B&B Hotels continued to fall behind after funding issues forced it to release riders as it searches for new sponsors. The team came out of the Giro with only 182 points, 130 of which were won on the penultimate stage, when the young Italian Alessandro Verre finished second behind Chris Harper (Jayco–AlUla).
Arkéa-B&B Hotels now sit 21st in the UCI Technical Rankings, more than 3,300 points from safety, and time is slowly running out. The team is therefore forced to dance all the dances and will be sending riders to every race with points to win on the UCI calendar. For example, over the next 10 days, Arkéa riders will participate in the Heylen Vastgoed Heistse Pijl, the Critérium du Dauphiné, the Brussels Cycling Classic, the Antwerp Port Epic, and the Duracell Dwars door het Hageland. And it will, of course, be hoping for better returns from the Tour de France, where it will probably count on the young Kévin Vauquelin, who won a brilliant stage victory in last year’s Tour, and veteran Cristián Rodríguez to bring back some points.
The Giro was of no help at all to two other teams in the relegation zone: WorldTour team Lotto, which declined its automatic invitation after it lost a major sponsor, Dstny, and therefore some of its best riders, and ProTeam Uno-X Mobility, which was not given a wildcard invitation to the race. Even though it has collected only 2,139 points this year, the lowest total by far of any WorldTour team, Lotto sits in a seemingly secure 12th place in the team rankings, nearly 7,000 points above Cofidis.
However, Uno-X Mobility will need a major haul of points from the Tour to get back into the race for WorldTour status. The Norwegian team has had a decent 2025 so far, winning 11 races and amassing 4,728 points. But it sits below Cofidis in 20th place and is 2,261 points behind Picnic PostNL, which occupies the last WorldTour spot.
The Dutch team had a very good Giro, collecting 934 points from veteran Romain Bardet, 22-year-old Max Poole, and young sprinter Casper van Uden. But Bardet is retiring after the Critérium du Dauphiné, so Picnic PostNL will be relying on 22-year-old Oscar Onley and 24-year-old Frank van den Broek to snap up valuable points in the Tour.
It will be an exciting battle to the end.
UCI technical tankings (bottom of the table)
16. Intermarché–Wanty – 23,984.28
17. XDS Astana – 23,157.34
18. Picnic PostNL – 22,686.83
19. Cofidis – 22,504.25
20. Uno-X Mobility – 20,235.67
21. Arkéa–B&B Hotels – 19,361
