Team Lotto-Belisol confident of a WorldTour spot
One out of the two sides, Team Lotto-Belisol and Team Saxo-Tinkoff will be awarded the UCI World Tour licence for the new season.
The Belgian team secured the 11th overall position after the UCI World Tour team’s ranking with a total number of 625 UCI points while Team Saxo-Tinkoff is 224 points behind at the 15th position.
Team Lotto-Belisol rode brilliantly throughout the 2012 season and deserves a chance to ride all the World Tour events of the year and the team is confident that it will conquer Bjarne Riis’ team in the pursuit.
Team FDJ and Team Argos-Shimano are also in the line and a final decision is expected from UCI by December 10th, 2012.
Team Lotto General Manager Bill Olivier briefed to La Derniere Heure, “We’re confident for the licence. We’ve just come back from a seminar at the UCI and we had some very good feedback”.
“It’s other teams who should be worried. We finished 11th in the 2012 WorldTour and had many victories”.
“And even with the departure of Gianni Meersman [to Omega Pharma-QuickStep], the UCI estimates that our sporting value has increased by 25 percent”.
“Frankly, we’re not even thinking about not getting a licence. We haven’t thought of a plan B or a plan C if we didn’t get one. We deserve it and we’ve done everything to get it,” he concluded.
Team Saxo-Tinkoff lost its main rider, Alberto Contador for most of the 2012 season which is the main reason behind its below-par performance for the season.
Almost 70 % of the total points earned by the team in 2011 came through the strong legs of Contador and his disqualification from all the victories since the Tour de France 2010 almost cost the team its World Tour status even for the 2012 season, but Riis
managed to dodge that bullet.
However, the situation is quite complicated at this instance as even after Contador’s return his total points will not count towards the team’s total for a period of two years, according to a UCI rule.
Evan an overall victory by the Spaniard at the Vuelta a Espana could not help the team ensuring its World Tour status for the new season.
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