XDS-Astana Off to Fast Start in Battle to Retain WorldTour License

Every three years, points won by the riders of professional road racing teams in races during that time are added up. The top 18 teams are then granted a WorldTour license, allowing them to participate in all WorldTour races. In addition, a UCI rule requires organisers to invite the two highest-ranked ProTeams to all of the Grand Tours, and the top three to WorldTour one-day races.

Furthermore, ProTeams may receive wild card invitations to WorldTour races, including Grand Tours, if they have been performing well and have a rider or riders that have performed well in WorldTour races in the past, such as Tom Pidcock of Q36.5 or Marc Hirschi and Julian Alaphilippe of Tudor Pro. The number of points on offer in a race depends on the status of the race. For example, for winning a stage in last year’s Tour de France, Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) won 210 points, but was awarded only 50 points for winning a stage in the Renewi Tour.

The current three-year period concludes at the end of 2025 and several teams have upgraded their rosters in this past season’s transfer market to increase their chances for promotion or reduce their likelihood of losing their WorldTour license. And no team was more active on the transfer market than XDS Astana. Not only did the team take on eight talented new riders, such as Italian champion Alberto Bettiol, Wout Poels and Sergio Higuita, but found a major new sponsor in the Chinese bike manufacturer XDS, which transformed the former Kazakh team into a Chinese squad.

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And, boy, has that paid off so far. Heading into the spring Classics season, XDS Astana has gathered 2,266 points so far, the second-most behind – who else? – Tadej Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates (3,563). The team has won only three races – all of them by Christian Scaroni – but also counts six other podium finishes among their successes so far. And their big guns haven’t raced in anger yet. As a result, XDS Astana’s chances for avoiding relegation no longer seem as hopeless as they did at the start of the year. In the UCI’s Technical Rankings, which will determine the promotion/relegation decisions, XDS Astana now stands 21st, with 15,886 points, still some way from the team now ranked 18th, Cofidis, which has 19,272.

The French team has won four races so far, two by its surprising young sprinter Martin Fretin, and has collected 945 points. It was also quite busy on last year’s transfer market and picked up some excellent riders, such as the German veteran Emanuel Buchman, Simon Carr and the La Flèche Wallonne and Tour de Pologne winner Dylan Teuns.

Meanwhile, Pidcock has had a promising start at Q36.5, accounting for four of the team’s six wins so far, all in minor races. He will have to up his game when the competition gets harder and points more difficult to come by. Bigger tests are coming up in March when he rides in the Omloop Nieuwsblad on Saturday, against Wout van Aert, and in the Strade Bianche one week later, against Pogačar and Hirschi. His team currently sits 24th in the Technical Rankings, with 7,672 points, and looks to have an impossible task of making it into the big time next year.

The same applies to Tudor Pro, which has 9,245 points and has won only three races so far this year. Hirschi will be riding in some big races this spring – La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, in addition to the Strade Bianche – while Alaphilippe will tackle Paris-Nice, Milan-Sanremo and the Amstel Gold Race, in the hope of picking up more points and convincing Grand Tour organisers that they have the class and quality to ride in the biggest races.

However, another ProTeam, the Norwegian Uno-X Mobility, sits just outside the cutoff point, in 20th, with 16,164 points, and looks to have a decent chance to be promoted. The team in 19th, Arkéa–B&B Hotels, is trying to stave off disbanding at the end of the year because of sponsors leaving and so is currently limited in how much it can invest in its racing. This leaves Uno-X looking up at Cofidis and down at XDS Astana as its main rivals for promotion. To succeed, it will need another super year from its sprinter Alexander Kristoff and its puncheur Magnus Cort who, between them, accounted for half of the team’s 26 wins in 2024.

This is a fascinating competition, perhaps even more interesting than the race for the top, which is currently limited to two or three teams.