The 2026 season has finished and here is a look at the UCI rankings for the year. Theres the three year promotion and relegation contest to note. More immediately we can see which teams are eligible for invites to the major races next year, assuming theyre viable.The chart shows the top-30 teams, blue are the 18 WorldTeams, red are the second-tier ProTeams.UAE lead the rankings for the fourth straight year while Red Bull are second, a big gain from sixth last year and with help from Remco Evenepoel and his score of over 7,000 points. Visma-Lease a Bike slip to third, the first time outside the top two since 2021 and are set to go into 2027 as Team Yellow B, the name of the legal entity behind them as theres no news on a search for a replacement title sponsor yet but theyre undewritten by Dutch billionaire Robert van der Wallen.Decathlon-CMA CGM are up from seventh to fourth, in part thanks to their nouveau riche status but signing Olav Kooij on a mega contract has only brought 1,600 points after he resumed racing mid-season; Felix Gall delivered double that and Tobias Lund delivered more points than Kooij too, all while Paul Seixas is their obvious big scorer but not yet their big earner as contract talks continue.Elsewhere Lidl-Trek are a flop in fifth, this is visible in the rankings but see the internation ructions with management this year and the shopping spree theyve been on lately. XDS-Astana played the system well last year to stay in the top flight and have kept this up.Netcompany-Ineos finish the season in eighth, their worst position since well last year when they were eighth too which was their lowest since the UCI team rankings started a decade go.Uno-X have done well. 11th last year was impressive and gave them just enough points to pip Cofidis for the World Tour but this late promotion could have overwhelmed them. Instead theyve finished 10th and got some high profile wins, built a foundation to secure them in the coming seasons and all retaining an underdog image.Alpecin-PremierTech finish 11th. Their top scorer is Jasper Philipsen who scored 3,665 points compared to 3,404 for Mathieu van der Poel. The pair earned two thirds of the teams points.Next come a bunch of teams with little more than a thousand points between Movistar and Cofidis. Movistar owe plenty to Enric Mas who got a quarter of their haul thanks to his Vuelta a Espaa win but also second in Lombardia and more. Kudos if you can know their second-best scorer, its Natnael Tesfatsion. EF were lingering in 21st place at times during the year but have moved up only they lose Richard Carapaz and clearly the search for a replacement title sponsor has yet to find one, perilous but Jayco only have one years funding from sugardaddy Gerry Ryan to bank on so theyre arguably in even more need of something and a reminder that while these rankings look back at 2026 we need to see the teams as much for what is coming next.Promotion-relegationThe red line sits between 18th and 19th place and marks the promotion and relegation zone but weve just finished the first year of the 2026-2028 cycle. Pinarello-Q36.6 and Tudor look set to join the World Tour for 2029 especially as theyve made strong signings for next year so ought to score more. NSN will hope that signing Richard Carapaz gives them a boost.Groupama-FDJ are in trouble but only 500 points adrift, so trouble rather than doom. Saying its only one year and theres time to turn things around may prove comforting but theres little to suggest they can reverse the trend. Romain Grgoire is a big scorer for them and so theyre at risk if he is injured in the spring; theyve lost big names like Stefan Kng and Valentin Madouas but the budget has not been deployed on big scorers, much of it gobbled up by contract inflation.Auto InvitesAssuming 18 teams in the World Tour then under rule 2.1.007 bis the best three teams outside the World Tour get automatic invitations to World Tour stage races and one day events: this is Pinarello-Q36.5, Tudor and Cofidis. These are elective, for example this year Cofidis could have ridden the Giro but declined. But team management has said it intends to do the Giro in 2027, both title sponsor Cofidis and their equipment suppliers all have business interests there.WildcardsUnder the same UCI rule there are two wildcard invites for a grand tour next year, as long as it makes the top-30 in this years final rankings. Alas Bardiani-CSF slipped to 31st at the last minute so a Giro dItalia without the green-clad squad looks likely for the first time since 2012. Organisers RCS will likely pick among Unibet Rose Rockets, Polti-Kometa, SolutionTech-Nippo-Rali and MHB CSB Telecom Fort. However we shall have to see for the viability of these candidates, Polti may have stopped as a sponsor; Telecom Fort too and so on. RCS doesnt have to decide yet.Vuelta a Espaa organisers Unibet have tended to rotate among the Spanish teams and thanks to some eleventh hour wins in Panama last weekend, Euskaltel-Euskadi move up to 29th place and look likely to get an invite, given Mikel Landa as a their new signing. Caja Rural sat out this years Vuelta so could start especially as 27th placed Kern Pharma is stopping. But Burgos-Burpellet-BH have been bolstering their squad.Which teams go to the Tour de France? Total Energies may not survive, more on this below. Unibet Rose Rockets could be a pick especially if they can say no thanks to the Giro to better save themselves for July but they dont have a must-have roster and their selling point of being strong on social media is no asset given the Tour hardly needs a boost here but in the past Christian Prudhomme has used the UCI rankings as a yardstick, it was cited as one reason why Caja Rural got invited this year instead of the Rockets and if so then the Franco-Dutch team qualifies. Burgos-Burpellet-BH have signed French riders from the Total Energies exodus but the Tour is a big ask.UCI Licence ReviewMade sense of it all so far? Its not certain that the teams cited above are all licenced for 2027. Yesterday evening the UCI published the list of teams applying for next season and there was a gap between the number of teams applying and the amount listed in the press release. Jayco and Picnic-PostNL were missing from the World Tour teams; TotalEnergies absent among the ProTeams. It happens, teams may not be able to send every document ahead of the 15 October deadline and have until December to fix this. We know Jaycos finances are tight and Picnic-PostNL are struggling on several fronts; the Dutch team got a warning last year from the governing body about its viability already.Total Energies is the one that looks in real trouble. We know the French oil major is stopping sponsorship having pivoted to fund Netcompany-Ineos. Team founder Jean-Ren Bernaudeau has talked a good game lately saying hes lodged a wage guarantee and other paperwork with the UCI but whats missing is a title sponsor contract. Only this is fundamental to the teams future. Its here theres a Catch-22 scenario because the team is eligible to for a Tour de France wildcard if they can find a main sponsor to keep the show on the road. But this may not be sufficient, if the roster is weak then ASO may just prefer another team. But theres a prize awaiting: a viable title sponsor, a couple of signings and its bonjour to the Tour for 2027 and beyond. This is appealing but these deals typically take years or months to land and there are only weeks left.ConclusionThese rankings can tell us which teams had a good season or not but theyre also used for next year and beyond. Pinarello-Q36.5 and Tudor are looking like World Tour teams already, their signings for next year consolidate this and they can and will race all the major events in 2027.Outside of the World Tour theres a tricky game of musical chairs where only a few surviving teams compete for the places left. If Euskaltel-Euskadi get to ride the Vuelta next year then Gotzon Martns win last weekend in the 2.2 Clsica Provincia de Chiriqu delivered this, arguably more than signing Mikel Landa. If teams are trying to game the system and going to far-flung places, well its not a bad outcome to populate smaller races as a way of attending the bigger ones.All teams face two races, the one to win events, land results, earn publicity and with this to get the points they need whether to top the table or qualify for races or the World Tour. The second race is existential, to be a viable team and to stay on the road. Here the promotion and relegation race ahead is fraught because some teams racing this year will no longer be around by 2029 or perhaps earlier.The post UCI WorldTeam and ProTeam Rankings first appeared on The Inner Ring.

The Tour de France 2027 opening ceremony and team presentation in Edinburgh ahead of the British Grand Dpart will be a paid-for, ticketed event, the race organisers have announced. Around 9,000 tickets are expected to go on sale, with prices starting at 27. The event, scheduled to take place from 18:30 on Wednesday 30 June, will be held on the esplanade outside Edinburgh Castle, and will involve the producers of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, a bagpipes and dance show that performs every August in the city. Tickets will go on priority pre-sale this Friday 23 October to people who subscribe to the Grand Dpart GB newsletter. Visit the Le Tour GB website to sign up. Members of British Cycling, Scottish Cycling and Beicio Cymru will then have a pre-sale window from midday the following day, Saturday 24 October. On Monday 26 October, the pre-sale will open up to customers of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Any remaining tickets will then go on general sale at midday on Friday 30 October. Fans without tickets will still be able to see the riders as they approach Edinburgh Castle on the Royal Mile, but will not able to access the presentation. The massed pipe band at the Royal Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, who are organising the Tour's presentation (Image credit: The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo)It is highly uncommon, though not unprecedented, for the Tour de Frances opening ceremony and team presentation to require tickets. The event consists of all 23 teams (184 riders) riding on stage to be introduced to the crowds. Last years presentation took place at the foot of the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain. In Lille the year before it was in the citys Grand Place, while in Florence in 2024 it was at the Piazzale Michelangelo. All three were open free-of-charge to the public. The last time the Tour started in the UK, however, the opening ceremony and team presentation were ticketed, with more than 10,000 people attending inside Leeds Arena. The race will begin on Friday 1 July, two days after the opening ceremony, leaving Edinburgh for a stage finish in Carlisle. Stage two will stretch the following day from Keswick to Liverpool, and stage three from Welshpool to Cardiff.The full route for next years Tour de France will be officially announced in a ceremony in Paris at 10:00 (BST) this Thursday 22 October.

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Lotto-Intermarch have confirmed the arrival of MauriVansevenant as the experienced Belgian climber joins from Soudal Quick-Step on a two-year deal. Following in the footsteps of his father, the West Flanders native brings a wealth of experience to the team. His father, Wim, rode for the team from...

Hey, look, Richard K-Farb Sachs is making gravel bikes now! View this post on Instagram Nice color, somebody has good taste. IF I GOT IT Id choose something similar.Of course some people think you need suspension to ride on GRVL, and despite being both literally and figuratively rigid insofar as my approach to bicycles is concerned, at the moment I am in the odd position of having not onebut two dual-suspension test-cycles:Both of which I rode this past weekend:Both rides were quite enjoyable too, though as I rode the latter bike I noticed a problem with the rear brake lever. See that silver pressed-in thingy that the brake lever pivots on?Im talking about this thingy:Well, at one point I noticed it was sticking out, and while I was able to push it back in, eventually after enough lever usage it would just wiggle its way out again. Fortunately I didnt have to end my ride early (I just kept popping it back in with my index finger Whac-A-Mole style every once in awhile), though when I got home and attempted to fix it I just wound up taking it further apart, so I ended up taking the whole thing off:No doubt with a little time and patience I could reassemble it, but I have a limited supply of both, and I confess it occurred to me that in the same amount of time I could just pack up the bike, send it back to Classic Cycle, and be done with it. However, the truth is Im still enjoying the bike, and it comes in very handy for throwing on top of THE CAR THAT I OWN when I find myself in these increasingly common situations where Im driving a kid somewhere and I need to wait around for a couple hours. Plus, isnt failing to repair the bike contrary to my mission as the Classic Cycle Old Crap Test Pilot? Isnt this whole thing about living with these bikes that the industry told us 20 years ago we had to buy and subsequently abandoned, and understanding what it takes to keep them running smoothly? Granted, I just made that up, but having just typed it I sure do like the sound of it.Fortunately, being an antique, the GT does not use dick breaks, so simply replacing the brake lever with a spare would seem like an obvious and easy solution for a lazy test pilot. Ordinarily thats exactly what Id do, but youll note the brake lever and the shifter are an integrated unit, so that wasnt going to work unless I replaced the shifter too. It then occurred to me this would be a good excuse to get a cheap, modern 1x drivetrain like Microshifts Advent X:However, not only would I have to, you know, pay for that, but it was also something of a cop-out and therefore contrary to the spirit of the OCTP exercise as described above:More importantly, see that Front Derailleur Stub (FDS)?Its ugly enough with a front derailleur on it. Now imagine it all by itself. I mean sure, I can live with some unused cable stops, but a naked FDS would drive me absolutely insane.So I ran through my mental inventory of shifters already in my possession that might work. As every retrogrouch knows, any shifting dilemma is easily solved with friction, but even I couldnt bring myself to use Silver2s in thumby mode on this bike. For three seconds I also thought about doing a drop bar conversion, but then I slapped myself across the face. This must have shaken something loose, because I then remembered I had these:You can ignore the front derailleur, thats from when I was thinking about giving the Jones the double-chainring-and-thumbshifter treatment. But I do like how this configuration resembles a surprised face, and it makes me think that Shimano should have had a helpful character named Thumby to compete with Microsofts Clippy:Anyway, as every bike dork of a certain age knows, Shimano 7-speed thumbshifters like these have an extra detent that allows them to work with an 8-speed drivetrain, which is what the GT has. This seemed like an ideal solution, since it was retrogroughy, but not absurdly so, plus if I put these shifters to work on the GT that would finally remove the temptation to molest the Jones. So on they went:The whole operation went quickly and smoothly:And a quick test ride around the neighborhood indicated everything was working:Which I confirmed with a proper ride the very next day:Obsolescence? I thumb my nose and my shifters at thee!