Good day and thank you for opening this week’s Wheel Talk Newsletter. The road season is done and dusted and what a season it was! Some teams wrapped up their 2024 in China with the Tour of Chongming Island and the Tour of Guangxi and some let their riders loose for the track World Championships in Denmark but by the time you’re reading this most road riders are kicking up their heels for a few weeks.
Wheel Talk
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While the Tour of Chongming Island and Tour of Guangxi were happening in China, a few top riders headed to Denmark instead to compete at the Track World Championships. Over the weekend jerseys were won by a few well-known roadies. Lorena Wiebes took home her first rainbow jersey in the Scatch event and the British women won both the Team Sprint (Sophie Capewell, Emma Finucane and Katy Marchant) and the Team Pursuit (Katie Archibald, Megan Brker, Josie Knight, and Anna Morris). Emma Finucane followed her Team Sprint performance with a win in the Sprint, Mina Sato won the Keirin, and Yana Burlakova won the 500m ITT.
Ally Wollaston, the 23-year-old on AG Insurance-Soudal who is set to join FDJ-Suez next year, took home two gold medals. First, she won the Elimination race, besting none other than Lotte Kopecky for the title. The following day she won the Omnium, this time ahead of Great Britain’s Jessica Roberts.
But the talk of the weekend was the two championships won by Denmark’s Julie Leth, who announced her retirement from the sport at the end of September.
“My last big international race will be the Track World Championships in Ballerup,” Leth wrote on her Instagram. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for this, but also know I won’t ever be more ready than I am now. It has always been the plan, and the more I’ve been saying it out loud, the more right it feels. I couldn’t think of a better way for me to say goodbye to professional cycling than with a home track World Championships.”
Leth has long been a top competitor both on the track and road. She spent four years with Hitec Products before joining Wiggle-High 5 for the 2017 and 2018 seasons. She then rode for Bigla for one year and Cetatizit-WNT for two before finishing her career with three years at Uno-X Mobility. In that time she’s been the Danish road and time trial national champion (in 2011 and 2014) and been a stabilizing force for every road race she’s rocked up to.
In August of 2023, Leth announced she and her husband, also a top-level track and road cyclist Lasse Norman Leth, were expecting their first child. She immediately made it clear that the pregnancy would not impact her goal of racing the Madison at the Paris Olympics with her long-time partner Amalie Dideriksen.
“I always said and thought getting pregnant would mean the end of my career, but recent year, has proven to me, this does not have to be the case,” Leth said. “I’m excited and happy to be in the situation where I won’t have to choose between being a cyclist and a mum. I know I wouldn’t have had this opportunity only a few years ago.”
“I hope to be back racing on the road next year, and the big goal and dream is to be on the start line in the women’s Madison next to Amalie in Paris and for the track Worlds in Denmark.”
Leth returned to her Paris preparations at the Track Nations Cup only three months postpartum, without any ambition or goals, simply to test the waters, but by July it was announced that she had been named to the Danish Olympic team with Dideriksen.
The goal was making it to Paris, but once that was already checked off, it became clear a medal was within reach. Leth and Dideriksen ended up sixth in the Madison, but their season and Leth’s career weren’t done yet. With an eye on Ballerup, they prepared for their final World Championship race together.
Winning the Madison, with her nine-month-old in the stands, would have been a dream come true on its own, but Leth followed it up with an individual title in the Points race a day later. When asked if she would really be retiring after the two medals, Leth responded, “I feel ready for new challenges.”
“I love cycling and I think to be able to choose when I stop and on my terms is a privilege,” she said. “I could continue doing this forever, but I also feel ready for new things. We will see what the future holds but track cycling has my heart.”
Leth and Dideriksen will race the Madison again this winter, Leth says it would be a shame not to do a race in the rainbow jersey, but her performances in Ballerup, and at the Olympics this Summer, are further proof that women can have it all. They can be an elite athlete and a mum at the same time.
Racing Continues…
…in 92 days at Tour Down Under!
Wheel Talk Podcast
Gracie, Loren and I got together for a final group podcast for a while to wrap up the final races of the season and chat about the latest transfers. We also talked about the placement of the Tour of Chongming Island and Tour of Guangxi in the calendar and if an earlier slot in the year would impact public interest in the races.
Next week Matilda Price and I chat with Tobin Heath about women’s sports and her discovery of cycling. You won’t want to miss it!
Obsessions: Abby – Fall, Loren – Harry has his final treatment this week!, Gracie – Agatha All Along
Let’s Discuss
Points, points, points!
A year-long conversation regarding relegation and promotion will kick off next year. At the end of the season, the top 15 teams will have the opportunity to stay or become WorldTour, determined by the number of UCI points they’ve accumulated throughout the 2024 and 2025 seasons. The UCI first introduced this for the 2022/2023 season and as a result, Ceratizit-WNT and AG Insurance-Soudal were granted entry to the highest level of the sport.
When the WorldTeam system was first introduced in 2020 teams only needed to provide the UCI with the necessary paperwork to become WorldTour. That meant guaranteeing minimum salaries for their riders, among other rules for professionalism within the team. There were some temporary rules about first-year teams not being able to apply for WWT status, but they were thrown out the window and Uno-X was able to secure the license their first year in the peloton.
Then the relegation rolled around and in 2023 it was the UCI team ranking that determined if a team could qualify for WorldTeam status. The system works on a two-year basis so 2025 will be the next round, and there are a few teams scrambling at the bottom who will have a fight next year securing enough points.
Thanks to their success in China, Ceratizit-WNT rose to eighth in the ranking, jumping Liv AlUla Jayco and Movistar. One of two non-WT teams currently sitting in the top 15 is EF-Oatly-Cannondale, a team that would have applied for a WT contract when they first formed this season if they were allowed. It is the American team’s goal to finish their 2025 in the top 15 and obtain the status of a top team. The other non-WT team currently 15th is VolkerWessels. The Dutch team, formerly known as Parkhotel Valkenburg, had some solid results in China as well which helped their current position.
The teams in trouble as of writing are Uno-X Mobility, which sits in 16th, and Roland in 17th. These two WorldTeams have struggled to crack and remain inside the top 15 teams since their WT status was granted in 2022. Uno-X Mobility is taking the challenge seriously. They’ve hired a few promising riders for next season in the quest for points including Ingvild Gåskjenn who finished third at the Amstel Gold Race this spring.
On the flipside, Roland has been quiet about any new additions to their team but they have lost a few riders including Mggie Coles-Lyster who is moving to Human Powered Health.
SD Worx-Protime, Lidl-Trek and Canyon-SRAM won’t be sweating when it comes to keeping their WT licenses in 2026, but the scramble at the bottom will be worth watching and 2026 could be the year VolkerWessels, one of the longer-running teams in the peloton, finally joins the top ranks, if they want to that is.
A picture video worth a couple of words
Let’s hear another round of applause for Julie Leth who wrapped up her career this weekend with two World Championship titles on the track and celebrated by greeting her son Alfred with her stuffed podium swan, on home soil no less!
Taylor Swift corner
After 131 shows Taylor Swift finally debuted a new bodysuit for the Reputation set of the Eras Tour. This was a big deal because for all of her other “eras” she has debuted new outfits at various shows, and has multiple versions of each, but Reputation has been the same black and red suit since the first show. In her first show since closing out the European leg, Swift walked out in a black and gold number that caused the Swiftie community to collectively lose their minds.
The show was in Miami and Swift brought out Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine to sing their track “Florida!!!” off The Tortured Poets Department album.
Until next time
Thank you for reading this week’s Wheel Talk Newsletter. Since we are now entering the off-season, I will need some help with talking points in the weeks to come, so feel free to drop me a note if you have a topic worth covering. We’ve still got some exciting transfer news coming, and a lot to reflect on from a fantastic season of bike racing.
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