"Something I would like to see" - Bauke Mollema proposes to reduce Tour team sizes to six riders to stop UAE's dominance

Cycling
Tuesday, 28 July 2026 at 03:00
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The general classification at the 2026 Tour de France was quite a simple affair, at least in the eyes of Bauke Mollema. Tadej Pogacar's UAE Team Emirates - XRG teammates have indeed showed little to no weakness throughout the three weeks, even when an illness threatened to decimate their ranks in third week.
Still, the Emirati formation seemed unshakeable with its depth. The departure of Brandon McNulty in stage 18 seemed to have caused no problems to the team around Tadej Pogacar who even won the next day in Alpe d'Huez.
Amazed by the strength of UAE, Mollema returns to an old idea that ASO should implement a rule change for each team to be represented by only 6 riders, instead of currently 8. Besides creating different race scenarios, it could free up two or three extra wild card spots, providing a necessary boost to the ProTeam division.
"Teams of only six men in the Tour, that is something I would like to see. Who would they leave at home then? Pogacar also needs two men for the flat stages. They would really have to make choices and could never control the race as well. Especially not if they also have to deal with illness or crashes, as was the case today," wrote Mollema in his column for Dagblad van het Noorden.

"Romandie with 100 riders was wonderful"

Mollema drew on his experience at the 2026 Tour de Romandie, where four WorldTour teams opted not to participate under the new rule where they are allowed to skip one (different) WorldTour event each year during the same UCI cycle (2026-2028), to argue that smaller pelotons would also improve rider safety.
"Moreover, it would also be good for safety in the peloton. I recently rode the Tour de Romandie, where the teams consisted of seven riders and a few WorldTour teams had also withdrawn. We rode with a peloton of only a hundred men. That created a completely different dynamic. I didn’t see a single crash all week. That was truly wonderful racing."
The debate surrounding team sizes at Grand Tour is not new to the peloton. The lineups have already shrunk from 9 to 8 in 2018 as organizers eyes improved safety as well as unpredicatibility of racing. Not even a decade passed, and a possibility of further reduction is in talks.
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