Spain closes in on France regarding UCI points and Olympic Games selections

The five countries with the most UCI points from their top 8 riders get four riders in the road race at the Paris Olympics. Belgium leads the ranking ahead of Denmark, Slovenia and Great Britain. Somewhat further behind, as Raúl Banqueri reports, is France, which is less than a hundred points behind Spain (12915 vs. 12820).

Juan Ayuso, Mikel Landa and Enric Mas finishing fourth, fifth and sixth in the Vuelta a España and Jesús Herrada winning a stage has given the Spanish team points to move closer to France after the Spanish grand tour.

The points are counted until the Tour of Guangxi that closes the season so we will have to take into account the results of the European Championships and, above all, the Italian classics at the end of the year, with special attention to Il Lombardia where Mas and Landa were podium in 2022. Should they repeat their performance they would almost certainly overtake a French team that has fallen apart somewhat in recent weeks despite appearing to have a comfortable lead. The fifth team will carry four riders and from the sixth they will only be able to go with 3.

So the 8 riders who accumulate more points for Spain, always with Banqueri's info, are Pello Bilbao, Mikel Landa (the only ones who exceed 2000 points), Juan Ayuso, Alex Aranburu, Carlos Rodriguez, Enric Mas, Ion Izagirre and Jesus Herrada. As we say, Il Lombardia can be the key to see which selection can take 4 riders to Paris.