{"id":198475,"date":"2025-04-30T15:16:52","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T15:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=198475"},"modified":"2025-04-30T15:16:52","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T15:16:52","slug":"xds-astana-getting-closer-to-retaining-worldtour-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/04\/30\/xds-astana-getting-closer-to-retaining-worldtour-status\/","title":{"rendered":"XDS Astana Getting Closer to Retaining WorldTour Status"},"content":{"rendered":"

The spring Classics season is over, so this is a great time to check on the progress (or regression) of the teams in the fight to keep or gain WorldTour status and receive automatic invitations to all of the big races, such as the Classics and the Grand Tour.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In order to do that, a team has to gain enough UCI points in the three-year period ending with December 31 of this year (though, since the racing ends earlier, the winners and losers will be known earlier) to rank in the top 18 teams in the peloton.<\/p>\n

However, the UCI has loosened up the regulations somewhat and has given invitations to Pro-level teams to the Classics and the Giro d\u2019Italia based on the team\u2019s personnel. For example, the Swiss Pro team Q36.5 has received these invitations based primarily (perhaps even totally) on the presence in their squad of Tom Pidcock. The same applies to another Swiss Pro team, Tudor Pro, which has both March Hirschi and former two-time world champion Julian Alaphilippe riding for it.<\/p>\n

With most of the big races still to come, it\u2019s a little early to draw conclusions. But two trends have become clear in the early going: the relentless progress of the XDS Astana team and the seemingly inevitable relegation of the French WorldTour team Ark\u00e9a\u2013B&B Hotel, which is having sponsor problems \u2013 and therefore cannot keep or sign top talent.<\/p>\n

XDS Astana went all out in the transfer market at the end of last year and has also gone all out on the road, sending riders to practically every race, no matter how small \u2013 or big. As a result, the team currently ranks<\/a> 19th, with 19,906.34 points, a mere 1,500 points out of that all-important 18th spot, currently occupied by Picnic Post NL. It stands on the brink of WorldTour status because it has amassed 6,286.66 points so far this year. Only Tadej Poga\u010dar\u2019s overall-top-ranked UAE Team Emirates\u2013XRG, with 12,688.42, and Lidl-Trek (9090.01), which ranks third overall, have collected more points in 2025 than the Kazakh team.<\/p>\n

Top point-haulers for XDS Astana are currently Christian Scaroni, with 841, and Simone Velasco, 840, both of whom came to XDS Astana through last year\u2019s transfer window. Velasco\u2019s big success came last Sunday when he finished fourth in Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge, while Scaroni won the second-level Tour des Alpes-Maritime and the Classic Var and finished on the podium of a number of minor races. It all adds up.<\/p>\n

\"Christian<\/a>
Christian Scaroni is one of the top point-haulers of XDS Astana. \u00a9 Profimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to the Dutch Astana domestique Ide Schelling<\/a>, \u201cIt is a complicated situation. Astana wants to send strong guys to smaller races to scoop up as many points as possible. It is a strategic game, and we are at the point now where not everyone can even get a start in those races.\u201d Scaroni said that his training with the team was influenced by its fight to retain the UCI license. \u201cWe switched things up a bit last winter with my coach, putting more focus on one-day races,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Another team doing well is the Norwegian Uno-X Mobility. While they\u2019ve only won 3,730 points this year, they sit in 20th place, only 670 points behind XDS Astana. The team is loaded with talent, such as the 32-year-old Magnus Cort, who has won nine Grand Tour stages in his career and has already registered nine victories this year. Last year, UNO-X Mobility amassed nearly 9,000 points, primarily by Cort, 37-year-old sprinter Alexander Kristoff and fast man S\u00f8ren W\u00e6renskjold. The team will have to improve on that to go past the WorldTour teams Picnic Post NL and\/or Cofidis, who sit 18th and 17th with 20,916.83 and 21,577.25 points, respectively.<\/p>\n

Picnic Post NL may have some problems staying in the WorldTour. Its leader, French veteran Romain Bardet, will retire from the sport after the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9, which means he won\u2019t be riding in the Tour de France. At 34, Bardet has seen his best days slip behind him, but he is still a class act and an excellent rider. More to the point, he collected nearly 2,000 points for the team last year, a third of that total in the Giro. Team sports director Rudi Kemna will be hoping to see a similar effort from the Frenchman in his last appearance in a Grand Tour.<\/p>\n

It’s not apparent who will replace Bardet. The most likely candidate is the 22-year-old Oscar Onley, who had a good year in 2024 and is having an even better season so far, though he will need to improve quickly to get the necessary results. However, such stalwarts as Max Poole, John Degenkolb, and Fabio Jakobsen are out injured, which means that another 22-year-old, the Czech Pavel Bittner, will be asked to step up. That\u2019s a lot of pressure for a young rider.<\/p>\n

The problem for Cofidis is time: many of its best riders are ageing. Jes\u00fas Herrada is 34, Ion Izagirre is 36, Emanuel Buchmann is 32 and Bryan Coquard is 33. This is not to say they cannot perform well, but it does put a lot of pressure on the young riders on the squad, such as the promising 24-year-old Milan Fretin.<\/p>\n

Fretin will be leading the team in the Giro and hunting stage wins and podiums. He has already won two minor one-day races this year and finished runner-up in the green jersey competition of the Volta ao Algarve. The French team will have to have a lot of things go right for them this year to stay ahead of the hard-charging XDS Astana and Uno-X Mobility and remain at the top level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The spring Classics season is over, so this is a great time to check on the progress (or regression) of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":198476,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[8496,8495,473,8497,8498,8494],"global-categories":[3366],"class_list":["post-198475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-road-cycling","tag-christian-scaroni","tag-max-poole","tag-romain-bardet","tag-simone-velasco","tag-worldtour-teams","tag-xds-astana","global-categories-cycling"],"yoast_head":"\nXDS Astana Getting Closer to Retaining WorldTour Status - \u0160koda We Love Cycling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The spring Classics season is over, so this is a great time to check on the progress (or regression) of the teams in the fight to keep or gain WorldTour\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/04\/30\/xds-astana-getting-closer-to-retaining-worldtour-status\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"XDS Astana Getting Closer to Retaining WorldTour Status\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The spring Classics season is over, so this is a great time to check on the progress (or regression) of the teams in the fight to keep or gain WorldTour\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/04\/30\/xds-astana-getting-closer-to-retaining-worldtour-status\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"\u0160koda We Love Cycling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-04-30T15:16:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/2\/2025\/04\/Team-XDS-Astana-profimedia-0992698735-CVR.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"990\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"660\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"tereza\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Siegfried Mortkowitz\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/04\/30\/xds-astana-getting-closer-to-retaining-worldtour-status\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/04\/30\/xds-astana-getting-closer-to-retaining-worldtour-status\/\",\"name\":\"XDS Astana Getting Closer to Retaining WorldTour Status - 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