'It was twist or stick' - Inside XDS-Astana's bid to avoid WorldTour relegation

Last winter, XDS-Astana looked dead in the water. Two years into the current UCI WorldTour cycle, the Kazakhstani squad were firmly outside the top 18 places in the ranking system, with more than 5,000 points to make up if they were to save themselves. 

Since the retirement of Vincenzo Nibali in 2022, Alexandre Vinokourov’s squad had struggled to define itself. Mark Cavendish had served as the natural figurehead in 2023 and 2024, and his record-breaking 35th Tour de France stage win was the high point, but there are no extra points for making history. By the end of 2024, the team’s position was dire.

One observer calculated that even winning all three Grand Tours in 2025 wouldn’t guarantee XDS-Astana a place in the top flight. It looked like mission impossible, and it raised existential questions for the future of the team, even despite the arrival of new sponsor and bike supplier XDS.

By the end of May, however, XDS-Astana had already hauled themselves out of the drop zone thanks to a remarkable streak of performances across the early season that saw them collect 13 wins and some 8,000 points. Even though the team’s progress stalled somewhat in June and July, they remain strongly placed to stay in the WorldTour for the next three years. 

A decade ago, Astana were among the behemoths of the peloton, claiming a Grand Tour win in each season from 2013 to 2016. They would enjoy another striking purple patch in 2019, but they found themselves increasingly surpassed by the WorldTour’s biggest teams in the 2020s. 

Even so, Astana kept racing and planning their seasons as though they were still the team of yesteryear. It was only last winter that the management fully committed to a new approach. Racing to win was replaced by riding for points.

“We knew it would be difficult, but it was twist or stick,” directeur sportif Alexandr Shefer told Domestique. “We had to do something.”

The first step was a radical overhaul of the roster, with some 14 new arrivals, including Wout Poels, Diego Ulissi, Fausto Masnada and Mike Teunissen. If it looked like a scattergun transfer strategy, that’s because it was. Rather than building a long-term project, XDS-Astana were retooling to score points in the here and now, anywhere they could find them. “We strengthened the team compared to previous years with points in mind,” Shefer said.

Signing experienced, battle-hardened riders was only half the battle. The team also had to figure out where best to deploy them, and that meant running counter to the philosophy of the team. Building a roster around men like Nibali, Alberto Contador, Fabio Aru and Miguel Ángel López over the years had made XDS-Astana almost hardwired towards focusing on the Grand Tours, even when the human resources at their disposal were no longer the same.

For 2025, the decision was taken to send their strongest riders to races outside of the WorldTour, or at least, away from events on the schedules of men like Tadej Pogacar and Mathieu van der Poel. There was an acceptance that the team would have to adapt to the system in order to survive.

Poels was dispatched to target – and win – the 2.Pro Tour of Turkey, for instance, while Harold López won the Tour of Hungary. Notably strong squads were sent to events like the Tour of Hainan and the Tour of Qinghai, and not simply to please Chinese bike supplier XDS.

“Many times, we sent our strongest riders to smaller races rather than to WorldTour races,” Shefer said. “We’ve had strong teams at races like Turkey, Hainan and so on, because we know there are a lot of points of offer there. And with the team we have right now and the level generally, we can maybe be more confident of a big result there than in a WorldTour race.”

The change in philosophy hasn’t been limited to race programmes, of course. It has also extended to in-race strategy. XDS-Astana saw how teams like Cofidis had survived the 2022 relegation cull and replicated the approach.

“We aimed more at scoring points than winning races, given that we were in such difficulty,” Shefer said. “It was different to what we did in previous years because we had never raced in search of points before. Unfortunately, we got to a point where, in order to save ourselves, we needed to start getting placings from two or three riders rather than racing to win. It’s not ideal, but in this moment our aim is to save ourselves.”

There has, Shefer added, been no dissent from the riders themselves about the approach. In meetings during the winter, management hammered home the concept, and the message appears to have been absorbed by most.

“All the riders are well aware that it would be easier to score points in smaller races than in the WorldTour,” Shefer said. “In WorldTour races these days, especially the bigger races, it’s very hard because it’s a very high level. And when certain big riders are in the field, you already know you’re racing for fifth place at best, and that’s if everything goes well. Whereas in the smaller races, you can get better results.”

By the end of the Giro in May, XDS-Astana were up to 17th place in the three-year ranking, and even though they were a subdued presence at the Tour de France, they still managed to improve their buffer on 19th place in July. They are now almost more than 2,500 points clear of Cofidis – not quite mission accomplished, but the trend looks clear.

“At the Tour, we brought a solid team with some good riders, but a lot of them didn’t have great condition, and the general level was really high,” Shefer said. “We hoped for a bit more, but if you’re not at 100% there, it’s very difficult to come away with a result. 

“But now we’ll see what the rest of the season brings and if we can collect more points. Because we’re not really talking about wins anymore, now it’s all about points. We’re only thinking about points, and the whole team is united behind that idea. We sit down every week and tally how many points we’ve scored, and we also look at our rivals.”

As things stand, 18th-placed Intermarché-Wanty are fending off Cofidis and Uno-X Mobility for the final WorldTour slot, though the picture is muddied by the Belgian squad’s touted merger with Lotto. But XDS-Astana’s task hasn’t changed. The idea is to keep picking off points until safety is assured.

As a rider, Shefer raced in the service of leaders like Michele Bartoli and Gilberto Simoni. As a directeur sportif at Astana since the team’s foundation, he has been part of Monument and Grand Tour successes. The change in philosophy, he confessed, was anathema to his concept of racing, but he, like everybody else, has been compelled to adjust. 

“It’s hard to accept, because it’s very different to how we’ve raced before,” he said. “Everybody likes to win, but we can’t race in the old way anymore, of focusing on just one rider and working for him, because there’s a big risk that if it goes badly for him, you’ll come away with nothing.

“Instead, you have two or three riders aiming to get fourth or fifth or tenth. It’s not really nice. I think it shows that there’s something wrong with this points system, you lose a lot of spectacle.”

And yet, Shefer is aware too that this is the new reality. Even if XDS-Astana secure WorldTour status for the next three seasons, this philosophy will be at the core of their approach in 2026. A strategy born out of desperation is now the template for them – and, perhaps, the bulk of WorldTour – from the start of the next three-year cycle.

“For the smaller teams, it will be like this even next year,” Shefer said. “If you don’t have one of the biggest riders and if you’re not certain that you won’t have worries about relegation, then you’re going to have to keep this philosophy to get points to save yourself. 

“In the WorldTour these days, we’ve got a Serie A and a Serie B. You have the top five teams in the world who have all the biggest champions. And then you’ve got the rest who are fighting for points.”