The UCI introduced the allocation of 15 Ladies’s WorldTour licences for the 2024-2025 seasons. AG Insurance coverage-Soudal QuickStep and Ceratizit-WNT Professional Biking transfer as much as the highest tier for the primary time.
The UCI additionally confirmed that the present 18 males’s WorldTour groups have been given licences for 2024, with 16 males’s ProTeams additionally awarded licences. These embrace Israel-Premier Tech, Lotto Dstny and Uno-X. The one new males’s ProTeam for 2024 is the TDT-Unibet group created by Bas Tietema and his pals after a 12 months at Continental stage.
Based mostly on the 2023 group rankings, Israel-Premier Tech and Lotto Dstny are mechanically invited to all UCI WorldTour occasions for the 2024 season, whereas Uno-X are mechanically invited to all of the UCI WorldTour one-day races. The opposite ProTeams should contend for wild card invites to the 2024 WorldTour races.
A complete of 16 girls’s groups utilized for the 15 Ladies’s WorldTour spots accessible, leaving Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi for an additional season on the Continental stage, topic to the settlement of their Spanish biking federation.
Of the three Continental squads which utilized for the 2 accessible licences, Ceratizit-WNT carried out the perfect of the trio this previous season, ending eleventh general within the UCI group rating, and AG Insurance coverage in thirteenth. The Basque group was ranked twenty fifth final 12 months.
Two slots opened for 2024 when a number of groups didn’t apply to proceed on the high stage, one in all which was the recently-folded EF Schooling-TIBCO-SVB. Then Jayco AlUla and Liv-TeqFind merged to type Liv-AlUla-Jayco, making a second opening.
For Ceratizit-WNT, it has been 10 years within the making for the squad.
“We’re happy with the group’s progress and achievements during the last decade, and we’re excited to be beginning the subsequent a part of our story. We’re thrilled to announce that we begin our tenth 12 months within the peloton as a part of the UCI Ladies’s WorldTour,” the German-based group posted to social media after the UCI announcement on Tuesday.
“In 2018, we began with a strong basis and the underlying ideas of serving to girls’s biking to develop. Now it’s time to put the roof on and provides younger riders alternatives to develop at their very own tempo. We’re prepared for the subsequent step, we’re prepared for the World Tour,” was the celebratory publish made by AG Insurance coverage-Soudal QuickStep.
4 of the returning WorldTour squads will race underneath totally different names within the new 12 months – Jumbo-Visma girls now Workforce Visma-Lease a Bike, Israel-Premier Tech Roland simply as Roland, Workforce DSM-Firmenich now Workforce DSM-Firmenich PostNL and Uno-X as Uno-X Mobility.
In 2022 the variety of Ladies’s WorldTour groups expanded from 9 the 12 months earlier than to 14, after which in 2023 the division gained a fifteenth group, that spot going to Fenix-Deceuninck (previously Plantur-Pura).
The 2024 highway season begins the second licensing cycle for UCI Ladies’s WorldTeams, with top-tier credentials allotted for 2 years.
From 2026, the 15 Ladies’s WorldTour licences might be allotted for a three-year interval, in alignment with the boys’s WorldTour. The UCI instituted the Ladies’s WorldTour class and licencing procedures in 2020.
UCI Ladies’s WorldTour 2024 groups
- AG Insurance coverage-Soudal Workforce (BEL)
- Canyon-SRAM Racing (GER)
- Ceratizit-WNT Professional Biking Workforce (GER)
- FDJ-SUEZ (FRA)
- Fenix-Deceuninck (BEL)
- Human Powered Well being (USA)
- Lidl-Trek (USA)
- Liv-AlUla-Jayco (AUS)
- Movistar Workforce (ESP)
- Roland (SUI)
- Workforce DSM-Firmenich PostNL (NED)
- Workforce SD WORX (NED)
- Workforce Visma-Lease A Bike (NED)
- UAE Workforce ADQ (UAE)
- UNO-X Mobility (NOR)