tuesday 31 December 2024 at 20h31
With the start of the 2025 cycling season still a few weeks away, we can - on this New Year's Eve - take a look at the main changes to the various cycling teams for the 2025 season. This year, unlike last year, velowire.com will not be changing outfits, but - unsurprisingly - several cycling teams will, as we'll see in this article!
UCI WorldTeams
In the first division, that of the UCI WorldTeams, we still find the same 18 teams, each with a license that will expire at the end of the season, as all UCI Women's WorldTour and UCI WorldTour licenses will be reallocated for the period 2026-2028.For 2025, the same teams will be involved, but for some of them, new sponsors have arrived and others have left (or moved down a notch, to no longer be title sponsors), and it's these changes that we'll be looking at here. In the end, only two UCI WorldTeams will be changing this year.
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Astana Qazaqstan Team becomes XDS Astana Team
Prior to the official announcement of the partnership, rumors were already circulating that Chinese equipment manufacturer XDS would be partnering the Astana team.In the official announcement on December 13, on the eve of the Xide Sheng Bicycle Fan Festival (see video) (XDS being the abbreviation for Xide Sheng), XDS is presented as a leading Chinese brand, specializing in the design, manufacture and development of high-performance bicycles, having become one of the most important Chinese equipment manufacturers since its creation in 1995. However, when we see its online presence, particularly for markets outside Asia which the brand is seeking to conquer with this partnership, we fear the worst for the time being... The occasion also saw the presentation of the X-LAB brand bike (XDS's performance brand) which will be used by the XDS Astana Team.
Team dsm-firmenich PostNL becomes Team Picnic PostNL
After the arrival of PostNL as second title sponsor in 2024, the year 2025 will see the Dutch team transform even further: historic sponsor DSM (partner since 2015, title partner since 2021; now, through a merger of companies, dsm-firmenich) makes way for a new title sponsor: Picnic. The online supermarket that delivers in small electric carts becomes the first title sponsor, while the Dutch Post Office, PostNL, remains the second.dsm-firmenich will remain the team's partner for innovation in nutrition and health.
Picnic's red logo will appear alongside PostNL's orange logo on the torso and back of team riders (men's, women's, development), just as each logo will appear on one of the jersey's sleeves. The dsm-firmenich logo will appear on the shoulders as well as on the thigh, where it will appear above those of Picnic and PostNL.
UCI ProTeams
The UCI ProTeams will feature the same 17 teams in 2025 as in 2024, but 5 of them will see a few changes ...Bingoal WB becomes Wagner Bazin WB by merging with Continentale Philippe Wagner-Bazin
The Belgian team Bingoal WB becomes Wagner Bazin WB in 2025 after merging with the Continental Franco-Belgian team Philippe Wagner-Bazin. A win-win solution for both, as Bingoal WB was forced to part company with Bingoal due to the new gambling law, and Philippe Wagner and Bazin are now sponsors at the next level up, that of the UCI ProTeams.The new jersey of the team born of this merger had not yet been presented at the time of publication of this article.
Corratec Vini Fantini becomes Toscani Factory Team Vini Fantini
Apart from the official registration with the UCI, there's not much else to be found about the name change of the team created in 2022 and historically sponsored by its equipment supplier Corratec to Toscani Factory Team Vini Fantini for the time being.CONTINUE READING AFTER THIS ADVERTISEMENT
Lotto Dstny becomes Lotto
The name Dstny has just arrived as a sponsor of the Belgian team historically sponsored by Lotto, but will only have been shown on the team's jersey for two years (whereas Dstny had planned a presence in the professional pelotons with this team for four and a half years) ... due to a conflict between Dstny and Lotto.The historic sponsor, Lotto, was left alone in the end, as no second title sponsor took Dstny's place, as had already been the case in 1989 and 1992 (apart from that, Lotto's name had always been associated, as first or second title sponsor, with another sponsor, since the team's creation in 1985). The jersey the team adopts in 2025 has a retro look, honoring Lotto's 40 years in professional cycling.
TDT-Unibet becomes Unibet Tietema Rockets and moves to France!
After the team's creation in 2023 as a Continental team, its promotion to UCI ProTeam in 2024 and its participation in a race such as the Amstel Gold Race, the move to a French license is made on paper with a view to the ultimate goal of taking part in the Tour de France, but the fact that the title sponsor is Unibet and that legislation in the Netherlands will change in July 2025 to prohibit sponsorship by a gambling company is probably not foreign to this either. The Unibet Tietema Rockets team thus becomes a kind of little sister to the Groupama-FDJ team, since Kindred Group, Unibet's Swedish parent company, was bought out by Française des Jeux (FDJ) in 2024.
by Dany45 over