We now know the names of the twenty-two teams that will take the start of the Tour de France 2023, in Bilbao (Spain), on 1er july. On Wednesday January 4, Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), manager of the prestigious cycling event, announced that it had invited Israel-Premier-Tech and Uno-X to join the twenty formations already expected on the Grande-Boucle.
The regulations of the International Cycling Union (UCI), the body which governs the discipline at world level, in fact require the eighteen teams of the WorldTour, the first division of road cycling, to take part in the event; while the two top-ranked lower-tier teams – ProTeams – benefit from an automatic invitation, in this case, the Belgian formation Lotto and the French Total-Energies.
There remained, therefore, at ASO’s discretion, the allocation of two wild cards, highly coveted. The custom, on the big tours, is that the latter are allocated to teams from the host country. The disappearance of the B&B Hotels structure and the automatic qualification of Total-Energies changed the situation.
It is therefore the Israeli team Israel-Premier-Tech, of four-time Tour winner Chris Froome, relegated from the World Tour at the end of last year, and the Norwegian Uno-X, who complete the starting list. “It’s a selection without surpriseargued Christian Prudhomme, the director of the event, to Agence France-Presse. Sometimes the choice is complicated; in this case it really isn’t. A hole is created behind the twenty-two best teams in the world. »
And to decline: “Israel-Premier-Tech won two great stages in the last Tour de France. It is an experienced team which has been further strengthened with Dylan Teuns. Uno-X is a recent team with a strong identity since there are only Norwegian or Danish riders. It has just signed Alexander Kristoff, legend of Norwegian cycling, and has in its ranks the winner of the Tour de l’Avenir 2021, Tobias Johannessen. »
“The maximum possible by regulation”
There will therefore be five French teams on the roads of the Tour this year, one less than in the last three years: AG2R-Citroën, Groupama-FDJ, Cofidis, Arkéa-Samsic and Total-Energies. However, France remains the best-represented nation, ahead of Belgium (4), the Netherlands and the United States (2 each).
“There were five French teams on the Tour between 2009 and 2019, except in 2010 when there were only four. It is only thanks to B&B that there has been one more French team in the last three years”summarizes Mr. Prudhomme. “It’s a great performance, and anyway it was the maximum possible according to the regulations”, he adds. In fact, the sixth French formation in the UCI ranking in 2022 is the development team of Groupama-FDJ, which plays in the third division.
The number of French riders, whose contemporary ceiling had been 46 representatives in 2011, has continued to drop over the last three editions, going from 39 in 2020 to 33 in 2021 and only 32 last year.