Grand Tours like the recently concluded Giro d'Italia are the most valuable to teams in terms of exposure, sponsor activation, and television time. So why would a team that doesn't even participate in the Giro d'Italia be able to accumulate more UCI points in the three weeks of the 2023 WorldTour points race?

An analysis by Javi Angulo on Twitter (opens in new tab) reveals that Arkea Samsic's strategy of skipping the Giro d'Italia and concentrating on earning points in smaller races has worked beautifully. earned from May 6 through May 29. points was more than the 11 WorldTour teams that competed in the Giro, and more than Jumbo Visma, who won two stages.

In February, Arkea-Samsic team manager Emmanuel Hubert announced that the team would decline an automatic invitation to the first Grand Tour in 2022.

"2022 is an important season in the history of the Alcare Samsic team and our sports department has established a strategy to achieve our goal of reaching the World Tour.

The team will be competing in the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España this season, but in May they focused on races like the Trobro Leon, where they won with Hugo Hofstetter, four in the top 10, two in minor points, and a Pro Series race totaled a whopping 465 points in the series.

Over the course of the day, Arkea Samsic, EF Education Easy Post, Israel Premier Tech, Team DSM, UAE Team Emirates, Movistar, Quick Step Alfa Vinyl, AG2R Citroen, and Cofidis took the overall Giro d'Italia more points than they had scored in the entire Giro d'Italia.

Most importantly, the French professional teams were well outside the "relegation zone."

This is a point that Luca Guercilena, manager of Trek Segafredo, pointed out when retweeting the data graph. This could = killing the team by moving the best roster to a smaller race just to score points and avoid relegation."

The teams currently in the relegation zone are Lotto Soudal and Israel Premier Tech. Neither team had much success in the Giro d'Italia. Caleb Yuan crashed in the opening stage and missed out on victory. Thomas De Gendt's stage win made up for 184 points in the Giro, but most of the team's points in May came from outside the Giro.

Philippe Gilbert won the 4 Jules de Dunkerque, and other results gave him 250 points. The Belgian team also had four riders in the points at Toro Bro Leon, for a total of 175 points. In the Antwerp Port Epic (1.1 race), the team scored 158 points, with Florian Vermeersch winning the race and sending riders to 8th and 13th place. He also scored 120 points in the Circuit Wallonie and 128 points in the Marcel Quinto Classic.

Meanwhile, outside of the Giro d'Italia, Israel Premier Tech's best result was 98 points at the Tour de Hongri.

John Lelangue, manager of Lotto Soudal, told Cycling News that the team's philosophy is that if you win, the points will follow. Nevertheless, they have been a solid bet since May, coming within 1,000 points of teams like EF Education-Easy Post, Cofidis, and Bike Exchange-Jayco in the 2020-2022 standings.

The World Tour was originally created to ensure that the best riders would participate in the top races, but the first three-year experiment with this points system is beginning to show signs of the opposite. ASO, the organizers of the Tour de France, fought tooth and nail for the promotion/relegation system. If smaller races that are not even televised internationally attract a better field, they will no doubt find a way to get the UCI to stop this system.