The UCI finalized the rankings for the Continental tour classifications on Tuesday, sealing the selections for the UCI Road World Championship elite men's road race. The top 10 nations in the WorldTour rankings automatically earned nine-man teams for the race, giving Spain, Great Britain, Colombia, Italy, France, Belgium, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany and the Czech Republic full complements.
Defending champion Michal Kwiatkowski looks to have missed out on a full team as Poland was outside the top 10 in the WorldTour and Europe Tour rankings. He is likely to have five teammates.
The United States narrowly met the requirement for a six-man team: as host country it was guaranteed six as long as it was in the top five nations of the UCI America Tour. However, before the Tour of Utah, it was sixth behind Brazil. While the performances of Utah overall winner Joe Dombrowski (Cannondale-Garmin) and third placed Brent Bookwalter (BMC) did not count toward that classification, the USA instead relied on stage winners Kiel Reijnen, Eric Young and Logan Owen to push them into fifth, just 42.5 points ahead of Brazil.
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The UCI is yet to confirm the final allotments, but it seems Slovenia, Ukraine, Russia, Denmark, Poland and Norway will have six riders, while Austria, Belarus, Portugal, Turkey, Lithuania, Estonia, Croatia and Ireland have three from their Europe Tour rankings.
Thanks to having a rider in the top 100 of the WorldTour individual rankings, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Slovakia will have three riders, giving favourite Peter Sagan at least two lead-out men. Latvia earned a single spot thanks to Gatis Smukulis' two points in the WorldTour. Azerbaijan, Greece, and Romania seem to have made one spot each thanks to having riders in the top 200 in the Europe Tour.
The international ambitions of the African riders on MTN-Qhubeka and other teams hurt countries like Eritrea, who fell out of the top of the African Tour. Algeria will have six riders, Morocco and South Africa earned three spots, while Mekseb Debesay's fourth place on the Africa Continental circuit gives Eritrea at least one rider, likely Daniel Teklehaimanot, who held the Tour de France mountains jersey. Tunisia also earned one place.
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