{"id":202002,"date":"2025-09-10T14:23:35","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T14:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=202002"},"modified":"2025-10-10T11:31:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T11:31:08","slug":"is-uae-team-emirates-too-good-for-the-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/09\/10\/is-uae-team-emirates-too-good-for-the-sport\/","title":{"rendered":"Is UAE Team Emirates Too Good for the Sport?"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a week left to ride in the Vuelta Ciclista a Espa\u00f1a, UAE Team Emirates\u2013XRG has won seven of the 16 stages raced so far, including four in a row. And this is a race without its all-conquering leader, Tadej Poga\u010dar. These seven wins have been achieved by four different riders: Jay Vine and Juan Ayuso, with two each, Jo\u00e3o Almeida and Marc Soler, one each, and the stage 5 team time trial. To say that the team is dominating the race is putting it mildly; they are pulverizing it. And with now 81 victories for the year, they are well on the way to destroying the record for team wins in a year of 85, set in 2009 by Columbia-HTC.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Nearly half of Columbia-HTC\u2019s total of wins were accounted for by the sprinters Mark Cavendish (23) and Andr\u00e9 Greipel<\/a> (20). \u00a0UAE\u2019s haul of wins were registered by 20 different riders, led by the indomitable Poga\u010dar, with 16. This is a team stacked with winners from top to bottom \u2013 and not everybody likes it. For example, the team\u2019s strategy in this Vuelta, to go for the wins record at the expense of winning the race for its leader, Almeida, has been repeatedly savaged by the great Sean Kelly in his role as TNT Sports commentator.<\/p>\n

And Almeida himself has often looked frustrated after riding without domestiques up some of the toughest climbs in the world, such as the Angliru. Asked about it repeatedly on TNT Sports, his response has been a laconic, \u201cIt is what it is.\u201d That at this point in the race he is still within striking distance of the race leader, Jonas Vingegaard (Visma\u2013Lease a Bike), is mostly due to his formidable climbing ability. Surely, the team will support him, rather than harvest more victories, in the final week of the race, with the outcome still in the balance. But more than one commentator has suggested that Almeida would be wise to follow in the footsteps of teammate Juan Ayuso and look for a team that would treat him the way UAE treats Poga\u010dar.<\/p>\n

But there have also been grumblings from many sides that the team\u2019s dominance is bad for the sport because it highlights the importance of money in success. According to Reuters<\/a>, UAE\u2019s budget for 2025 is about $65 million (\u20ac55.5 million). The next highest budget is that of Red Bull\u2013BORA\u2013hansgrohe, at an estimated \u20ac50 million, according to cyclingsonar.com<\/a>. But a more relevant comparison would be to a \u201csmall\u201d team, such as EF Education\u2013EasyPost, which Reuters estimates has a budget of $25 million (\u20ac21.4 million). Note that these figures are all estimates, rather than proven facts.<\/p>\n

\"Tadej<\/a>
Almeida would be wise to follow in the footsteps of teammate Juan Ayuso and look for a team that would treat him the way UAE treats Tadej Poga\u010dar. \u00a9 Profimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This discrepancy has led to frustration in the peloton, as the big money guzzlers naturally dominate the more economical teams. “Professional cycling is one of the few high-level professional sports left in the world that does not have some sort of financial fairness regulation,” EF Education\u2013EasyPost boss Jonathan Vaughters told Reuters. “And that makes it exceptionally difficult for the middle or the smaller teams to exist.” It also makes the racing less enjoyable because, for example, when Poga\u010dar is riding in a Grand Tour, the question is not who will win but by how much he will win. In this Vuelta, whenever a UAE rider joined a sizable breakaway, I just assumed that he would win the stage \u2013 and he usually did.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just the Grand Tours. During this Vuelta and in this year\u2019s Tour de France, while Poga\u010dar and UAE riders were gobbling up wins, other team riders won other races, such as the Tour of Poland and the Tour of Austria. Money talks and money wins. But according to the highly respected Cycling Weekly <\/em>news editor Adam Becket<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s too much. This isn\u2019t about a generational talent like Poga\u010dar winning too much, this is one team dominating like almost never before, hoovering up everything. The issue is money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Becket believes that something must be done to level the playing field. \u201cThe answer is legislation, and some kind of system for financial equity,\u201d he wrote. \u201cNot a salary cap, but perhaps a budget cap. Here is how much money a team is allowed to spend up to, and it\u2019s up to the team to work out how to divide that up; want to spend half of it on one big name? Fine. Want to try and Moneyball the system? Also fine. A salary cap is too hard and fast, but one which covers all outgoings allows for more autonomy. The UCI needs to act.\u201d<\/p>\n

It’s a good idea for an ideal world, but we live in this world and there\u2019s a catch: How will the megacompanies and wealthy nation states that are bankrolling the top teams react when they no longer have the financial freedom to buy that young superstar in the window? Sponsors see their sponsoring as an investment that will bring a big return in name recognition and general PR, especially for nations such as the UAE, which have a human rights problem. They might just get out of cycling altogether and look for a sport that welcomes the big bucks and doesn\u2019t give a fig about fairness, as cycling does now.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s this. Since cycling has become the big global sport it is now, more high rollers have put their money into cycling teams, such as the drinks giant Red Bull, the world’s largest sporting goods retailer Decathlon and the multinational discount grocery store chain Lidl. I expect this trend to continue, which will more or eve n things out at the top of the food chain but drive smaller teams out of the sport. They might be replaced by more big players, so that eventually you could have mostly rich teams battling it out on more or less equal terms. Unless of course a team like UAE Team Emirates\u2013XRG escalates and raises its budget to \u20ac100 million, which is likely to happen.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a difficult problem to solve, and I expect the UCI to do nothing that could halt the money coming into the sport, because money is partly fueling cycling\u2019s global expansion. Just think of what Poga\u010dar\u2019s appearance at the World Championships in Rwanda will do for the sport in that country and on the entire continent. Kids from Algeria to South Africa will pick up bikes and dream of becoming the next Pogi. And maybe one of them will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With a week left to ride in the Vuelta Ciclista a Espa\u00f1a, UAE Team Emirates\u2013XRG has won seven of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":198375,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[6900,4479,6699,3415,7847],"global-categories":[3366],"class_list":["post-202002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-road-cycling","tag-jay-vine","tag-joao-almeida","tag-juan-ayuso","tag-tadej-pogacar","tag-uae-emirates","global-categories-cycling"],"yoast_head":"\nIs UAE Team Emirates Too Good for the Sport? - \u0160koda We Love Cycling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With a week left to ride in the Vuelta Ciclista a Espa\u00f1a, UAE Team Emirates\u2013XRG has won seven of the 16 stages raced so far, including four in a row. 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