Tadej Pogačar isn't making cycling boring, UAE Team Emirates-XRG are – I hope they don’t sign Paul Seixas

In modern pro cycling, the term super-team gets bandied about a lot. The class of squad which dominates, is able to buy more of the best riders than everyone else, is just a rank above, essentially. There have always been dominant teams, from La Vie Claire to HTC Highroad, but in the last decade, there have been Team Sky, Jumbo-Visma and UAE Team Emirates. Some would add Lidl-Trek and Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe into that group too.

This week, it was reported that Ineos had acquired new sponsorship worth €20 million a year in order to rejoin the ranks of the ‘super-teams’.

For me, this term should not be plural. There is one super-team: UAE Team Emirates-XRG. In 2024, they won 81 times. In 2025, they won 97 times. So far in 2026, they’ve won on 14 occasions, just under the 15 they’d won by this point last year, but still on target for a gargantuan tally by the end.

Adam Becket

News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com - should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.

It is far from just Tadej Pogačar. The Slovenian, the best bike rider in the world, has raced and tasted victory once this year. He dominated Strade Bianche for the third year in a row, but seven other riders have won races; Isaac del Toro, Tim Wellens, António Morgado, Marc Soler, Jan Christen, Juan Sebastián Molano and Jay Vine have all stood on the top step of the podium.

Despite Jhonatan Narvaéz and Tim Wellens both being out for significant amounts of time with injury, their Classics squad reigned supreme at Strade, with Pogačar dovetailing with Del Toro and Christen perfectly to deliver victory; the latter pair finished third and sixth, after top work by Florian Vermeersch, Felix Großchartner, Kevin Vermaerke and Domen Novak. No other team has this level of strength in depth.

UAE has the backing of a sovereign wealth fund from an oil rich nation behind it, so it is not a surprise that they can afford to stockpile riders like almost no team before. The team are able to dominate throughout the year, not in one type of race or situation, but across many. When HTC were winning all the time, it was mostly in sprints; when Sky ruled, it was only largely at the Tour de France. Jumbo-Visma won the Giro d’Italia, Tour and Vuelta a España in 2023, but they only won 69 times.

This is clearly tilting the balance of competition to the detriment of racing, to the product of cycling. The issue isn’t the generational talent of Pogačar on its own, it's that he has what might be the strongest squad in history behind him.

The most exciting upcoming talent in the world right now is Paul Seixas. The 19-year-old has won more UCI points at his age than Pogačar or Remco Evenepoe did, or a whole host of other phenoms. The Frenchman was the nearest challenger to Pogačar at Strade Bianche on Saturday, and the applause that greeted his arrival in Siena was the loudest all day.

He has a contract with his current team, Decathlon CMA CGM, that runs until 2027, but sharks are already circling to secure his future. One shark in particular, naturally. Yes, it’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG, according to Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws.

It is only slightly hyperbolic to say that if Seixas moved to UAE cycling would be ruined for me. I want to see different riders at different teams dueling it out for wins. I do not want to see one nation state-backed outfit winning forever, inexorably, hoovering up all the talent. I sincerely hope Seixas stays at Decathlon, and that he is allowed to grow and flourish there. He’s only 19, after all.

Like how the wealth of nation states or people connected to them have unbalanced football through PSG, Man City, and others, it has come for cycling. There is no Financial Fair Play or draft system in the wild west of the WorldTour, nor does there appear to be any work happening to bridge the gap between rich and poor.

The inequality of cycling’s finances is not a fresh topic, in fact it is a subject that I have returned to repeatedly. Bigger and bigger sponsors are needed just to keep some afloat, while the team at the top continues to stockpile the best riders.

The answer has legislation from the top down, and some kind of system for financial equity, but this might require some turkeys to vote for Christmas, which seems unlikely. A salary cap seems too hard and fast, and damaging to riders, but some kind of budget cap could work, allowing teams to spend money as they see fit. Perhaps the wealthiest team’s spending could be tied to the poorest, with a limit on how much more the top team could spend, meaning that budgets couldn’t spiral out of control. This isn’t just about UAE Team Emirates, as another nation state or billionaire could simply come in and further stretch levels of finance in cycling.

If not, then we will live in a world where Pogačar can be backed by Del Toro and maybe Seixas in the future. The same team will keep winning all the time, and this will be normal. We can’t allow cycling to become too unbalanced.

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If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.