Arnaud De Lie claws Lotto Soudal into proximity of BikeExchange and EF Education

The UCI points ranking, provided by Raúl Banqueri, shows a new update in which Lotto Soudal - and Israel - Premier Tech - are visibly cutting the gap back to EF Education-EasyPost and Team BikeExchange - Jayco.

This comes after the recent success that Arnaud De Lie has been bringing Lotto Soudal, with victories at the Marcel Kint Classic, the Heistse Pijl and more recently the Ronde van Limburg all in quick succession and against world-class competition. Despite being races that are outside of World Tour, they have been bringing in points that have put the Belgian team in range of just over 450 points of the American team and 600 of the Australia team.

After their one-two win at the Mercan'Tour Classic Alpes Maritimes, Israel - Premier Tech have also taken an important step and now sit less than 900 points behind EF Education, a big gap but one that has been bigger over the last few weeks. Both teams that sit just above the line are now relatively distant from those above, and are struggling to obtain points.

After Simon Yates' GC disappointment at the Giro d'Italia, Dylan Groenewegen has not been able to contest either sprints so far at the Critérium du Dauphiné which further illustrate the difficulties, whilst EF haven't shown signs that are much more promising. With the GC of both Dauphiné and the Tour de Suisse in the coming weeks, aswell as some more pre-Tour de France racing, the rankings are set to suffer some more changes.