WorldTour 2017 Preview

Happy New Year, everyone! Now that 2017 is underway we can begin to anticipate the expanded WorldTour, which begins in sixteen days when the Tour Down Under kicks off in Unley. Let’s ring in the changes.

Teams Out: Farewell to Tinkoff and IAM Cycling, now defunct.

Teams In: Hello to Bahrain-Merida and Bora-Hansgrohe (once Bora-Argon 18).

Team name changes: Lampre-Merida is now UAE-Abu Dhabi, Etixx-Quick Step is just Quick Step, Orica-BikeExchange becomes Orica-Scott, Giant-Alpecin switches to Team Sunweb-Giant, while caffeinated shampoo Alpecin heads over to Katusha to become its second title sponsor.

Retirements: The biggest names that have hung up the professional shoes are Fabian Cancellara, Joaquim Rodriguez and the man El Purito battled in the 2012 Giro d’Italia, Ryder Hesjedal.

Also gone are Jean-Christophe Peraud, runner-up in the 2014 Tour de France, Canadian Christian Meier, Jack Bobridge, Michael Rogers, Gianni Meersman, Yaroslav Popovych and Frank Schleck.

Transfers: There was a lot of movement in the WorldTour ranks, with some of the biggest riders heading to new teams.
Peter Sagan: Tinkoff to Bora-Hansgrohe
Vincenzo Nibali: Astana to Bahrain-Merida
Alberto Contador: Tinkoff to Trek-Segafredo
Philippe Gilbert: BMC to Quick Step
Darwin Atapuma: BMC to UAE Abu Dhabi
Michael Matthews: Orica-BikeExchange to Sunweb-Giant
Wilco Kelderman: LottoNL-Jumbo to Sunweb-Giant
John Degenkolb: Giant-Alpecin to Trek-Segafredo
Diego Rosa: Astana to Sky
Jon Izagirre: Movistar to Bahrain-Merida

The Schedule: At first the UCI added ten races to the 2017 WorldTour calendar, and then announced an eleventh in the season-concluding Tour of Guangxi (October 19-24), before losing the Tour of Qatar and going back down to ten.

Cycling’s governing body declared that the WorldTour teams could opt out of the ten new events.

Points: Last season the UCI introduced the UCI World Ranking points system, which was different from the WorldTour points scale. For 2017, the systems will be the same.

This means that riders will now get points for placing in the top 60 rather than top 20 of a race. Also, points will be given to riders who top the final points and mountain classifications in Grand Tours, and points are awarded to a rider wearing a race leader’s jersey per stage.

In all, a greater number of riders will be able to score points.