The UCI announced on Wednesday which teams have applied for the various statuses across men’s and women’s cycling. The 2022 season saw 14 teams in the Women’s WorldTour with a maximum of 15 spots available. They are Liv Racing-Xstra, Jumbo-Visma, SD Worx, Team DSM, Movistar, UAE Team ADQ, Canyon -SRAM, FDJ-Suez-Futuroscope, BikeExchange-Jayco, Trek-Segafredo, Human Powered Health, Roland Cogeas Edelweiss Squad, Uno-X and EF Education-TIBCO-SVB. Of these teams, only Human Powered Health is missing from the UCI list for 2023.
The team has been quick to point out that there is a good reason for this. Human Powered Health changed its banking provider during the season and that has resulted in a delay in being able to submit the paperwork surrounding the bank guarantee. The guarantee is a necessary step in place so that if a team goes under, as we saw with Paule Ka in 2020, riders and staff will still be able to receive their salary. This affects the application of both the men’s and women’s teams and the UCI is aware. It is expected that Human Powered Health will appear in the WWT list when the final confirmation is made in December 2022.
So whilst 16 teams were on the list, really it is 17 teams who have applied for 2023 Women’s WorldTour status. As discussed previously when talking about Women’s WorldTour promotion, it is the team with the highest points this season who will be given the final licence provided their background checks are ok. At the time of the linked article, Ceratizit-WNT looked nailed on to be in that spot but a late-season charge from Plantur-Pura confirmed them as the highest-ranked application team. Valcar-Travel & Service are easily the highest-ranked non-WWT team but their inability to gain sponsorship to join the WWT is well documented.
We await the first week in December for confirmation of the final 15 WWT teams in 2023, but pending any last-minute administrative shocks, we should already know the outcome.
