Then the landscape shifted again. By the end of 2025, Roland was the lowest placed Women\u2019s WorldTeam in the three-year cycle rankings, and rather than hanging on at the top tier with a squad stretched to breaking point, it chose to step away entirely. Not down to ProTeam, but all the way back to Continental level in 2026, with an ultra-thin roster and no wins on the board.<\/p>\n
That decision was not an admission that the team forgot how to race. It was an acknowledgement that the Women\u2019s WorldTour had started to reward depth, redundancy, and calendar coverage as much as talent. Roland could produce riders. It could still win races. What it could not do, sustainably, was fund the modern version of \u201cbeing WorldTour\u201d on its terms.<\/p>\n
![\"Morgane](\"https:\/\/procyclinguk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Morgane-Coston-Roland-2025-819x1024.avif\"\/)
<\/p>\n
A timeline of reinvention: the names tell you where the pressure points were<\/p>\n
Roland\u2019s identity has been rebuilt more often than most teams manage in a decade, and the naming changes are not cosmetic. Each one signals a shift in funding, geography, and what the team could realistically target.<\/p>\n
It began as Cogeas-Mettler in 2018, became Cogeas-Mettler-Look through 2019 to 2021, then stepped into the Women\u2019s WorldTour in 2022 as Roland Cogeas-Edelweiss Squad. The Israel-Premier Tech Roland year in 2023 brought a sharper profile, before a reset to simply Roland for 2024 and early 2025. In June 2025, the Le D\u00e9voluy partnership arrived with talk of a new training base and a fresh long-term narrative<\/a>. By 2026, the team had dropped back to Continental status.<\/p>\n The story underneath is consistent: when the team was at its best, it was a specialist at picking the right moments, backing leaders who could convert opportunity into wins, and giving younger riders responsibility. The problem is that the Women\u2019s WorldTour now punishes specialist teams that cannot also be generalists across the full calendar.<\/p>\n 2018: the credibility year, driven by a single ruthless engine<\/p>\n The first season mattered because it established intent. Roland did not enter the sport quietly. It came in with a rider who could win immediately, and a programme designed to make those wins count.<\/p>\n Olga Zabelinskaya was the defining figure of 2018. The win at Chrono des Nations in October was more than a line on a results sheet. It was proof that this team could land a serious result in a race that carries weight, late in the year, when tired legs and motivation gaps expose weak programmes. That kind of win travels. It tells riders and sponsors that the project is real.<\/p>\n Around that headline moment, the team\u2019s broader approach was already visible. It targeted races where it could control outcomes, stack points, and build confidence. This was not a team trying to out-muscle the established European squads. It was trying to out-plan them in the spaces they did not always prioritise.<\/p>\n 2019: expansion, variety, and the first hint of a pathway team<\/p>\n In 2019, the team widened its net. You can see it in the range of victories and in the balance of the roster. This was the year where Roland began to look less like a single rider plus support, and more like a platform.<\/p>\n The high points came in clusters. Antri Christoforou delivered repeatedly across time trials and one-day races, then added Asian continental titles in both the time trial and road race. Amber Neben<\/a> brought a different kind of credibility, taking the US national time trial title. Zabelinskaya remained productive too, again showing that the team could build seasons around riders who knew how to win.<\/p>\n What makes 2019 important in hindsight is the shape of it. There is a mix of disciplines, a spread of countries, and an early sense that riders could join this team and actually be allowed to race for themselves. That sounds obvious, but it is a rare commodity in women\u2019s cycling. For a younger rider, \u201copportunity\u201d often means waiting behind someone else\u2019s ambitions. Roland was starting to offer an alternative.<\/p>\n Letizia Borghesi\u2019s presence in this era sits neatly in that frame. She is a rider who would go on to become a dependable WorldTour contributor, and teams like Roland are often the place where that transition begins: not with perfect results, but with real responsibility.<\/p>\n 2020: the recruitment wave and the points economy in action<\/p>\n The 2020 season was when Roland\u2019s operating model became explicit. There was a large intake of younger riders and neo-pros, mixed with experienced names who could steady the programme. This was not recruitment for glamour. It was recruitment for growth and survival at the same time.<\/p>\n The wins told the same story. In Turkey, the team collected early-season victories through Diana Klimova<\/a> and Daria Malkova. Later in the year, Maria Novolodskaya<\/a> won back-to-back at altitude in the Mount Erciyes races, the kind of results that signal a team is not only chasing soft points, but can also win when the racing gets harder.<\/p>\n National titles added texture: Mia Radotic\u2019s Croatian time trial championship, and Klimova\u2019s Russian national road win. These are not just jerseys. For smaller teams, they are a marketing asset and a programme stabiliser. They tell the peloton that riders can arrive, be backed, and leave with something meaningful.<\/p>\n If you want the real takeaway from 2020, it is not the individual events. It is the efficiency. Roland turned selected blocks into output, and used that output to justify the next step. This is the season where the Women\u2019s WorldTour move begins to feel less like a dream and more like a plan.<\/p>\n 2021: a core forms, and leadership becomes the team\u2019s currency<\/p>\n By 2021, Roland\u2019s pre-WorldTour identity had matured. The roster blended development with leadership, and the results again arrived in targeted clusters.<\/p>\n Tamara Dronova winning the Russian national road title was the clearest leadership marker. It is the kind of result that says a rider can carry pressure and deliver when the race is shaped around expectation. Zabelinskaya and Dronova also contributed wins in Turkey, underlining how the team continued to pick environments where it could win, rather than simply participate.<\/p>\n Two names in 2021 feel especially significant because they foreshadow the WorldTour era. Dronova became the rider you could build around. Petra Stiasny<\/a> arrived during the season, and her profile made sense for what the team would soon need: climbing talent, endurance, and the ability to grow into harder calendars.<\/p>\n This is where Roland\u2019s pathway identity becomes more than a nice idea. It becomes functional. Riders join, learn to lead, and start to look like WorldTour riders before the licence ever arrives.<\/p>\n 2022: WorldTour entry, and the year the job description changed overnight<\/p>\n The jump to Women\u2019s WorldTour status in 2022 was the team\u2019s biggest institutional step. It is also where the sport stops being forgiving.<\/p>\n At WorldTour level, survival becomes a skill. You cannot only target. You have to show up repeatedly, in different terrains, against deeper squads, with fewer weeks where \u201clearning\u201d is accepted as an excuse. Roland\u2019s 2022 rankings show a team that did not thrive, but did belong. It was 14th on the WorldTour team standings, and Dronova was 20th in the WorldTour individual classification, a strong indicator that the team had a rider who could compete in meaningful races even without top-tier support depth.<\/p>\n This season is best understood as a reality check. The team\u2019s previous model was built on control: pick the right races, arrive with leaders, leave with results. The WorldTour model is built on exposure. You are constantly in the shop window, constantly compared, and constantly asked to run multiple programmes even when your budget is built for one.<\/p>\n Roland got through it, which in itself was a success. It also learned how thin the margin would be going forward.<\/p>\n 2023: the high-water mark, when a win changed how the team was perceived<\/p>\n If you want Roland\u2019s peak moment, it lives in 2023. The Israel-Premier Tech Roland branding gave the team a more polished look, but the real shift came from performance.<\/p>\n Claire Steels<\/a> winning the reVolta with a solo move was the kind of result that cuts through. It is a win that tells the peloton a rider is not simply surviving the WorldTour, she is shaping races in it. For Roland, it was a perfect advertisement of what the team did best: give a rider room to lead, back that leadership, and allow a breakthrough to happen.<\/p>\n The rankings reflect the same sense of momentum. The team finished 12th in the WorldTour standings and 11th on the broader UCI team ranking. Steels was the best-placed rider in the UCI individual ranking for the team at 37th. That combination matters because it implies a team with direction, not just isolated points.<\/p>\n But 2023 also carried the seed of the next problem. When a smaller team produces a rider who wins like that, the market reacts. The rider\u2019s value rises quickly. Bigger squads offer more stability, more support, and more chances to repeat those moments. Roland\u2019s challenge is that it was excellent at creating that value, and less equipped to keep it.<\/p>\n 2024: the squeeze year, when being thin stopped being manageable<\/p>\n After 2023, Roland reset again, and the vulnerability became more visible. In 202,4 the team\u2019s WorldTour ranking dropped to 20th, while Dronova remained its best-placed individual rider at 62nd on that same WorldTour list. On the UCI side, the team ended 17th, with Dronova 49th individually.<\/p>\n Those numbers point to a familiar mid-tier story: one or two riders doing the heavy lifting in a season that demands far more breadth. This is the season where crashes, illness, and ordinary dips in form become structural threats, because the team does not have enough redundancy to absorb them.<\/p>\n The key point is that 2024 was not \u201cbad racing\u201d. It was racing that exposed the cost of being small in a calendar that increasingly rewards volume. If you cannot run two competitive programmes at once, you will miss points, miss opportunities, and eventually miss safety.<\/p>\n 2025: targeted success, new ambition, and a WorldTour model that no longer added up<\/p>\n In 2025, Roland\u2019s year had two parallel stories running at once. On the road, it could still win. The El Salvador block delivered a concentrated set of victories, the kind of targeted execution Roland had always been built to produce. Mia Griffin<\/a> also emerged as the best-ranked rider for the team that season, finishing 81st on the UCI individual ranking, which fits the profile of a rider who can collect results and keep a programme credible.<\/p>\n Off the bike, June brought the Le D\u00e9voluy partnership and the idea of building a training base. It was a bold play. It suggested long-term thinking, a commitment to performance, and a desire to attach the team to a place and an identity rather than simply a sponsor line.<\/p>\n Then the WorldTour reality reasserted itself. The new participation framework in women\u2019s cycling tightened expectations. Women\u2019s WorldTeams are effectively required to cover the full Women\u2019s WorldTour calendar with only one permitted opt-out, with mandatory participation in the Giro d\u2019Italia Women, Tour de France Femmes, and Vuelta a Espana Femenina. For a squad already living close to the edge, that is not just a rule. It is a budget multiplier, a staffing multiplier, and a fatigue multiplier.<\/p>\n This is where Roland\u2019s decision becomes understandable, even if it still feels stark. The team did not drop to ProTeam. It went straight back to Continental, choosing fewer hoops and more control over its season. In 2026, the roster being listed at just two riders and the win tally at zero makes the point more bluntly than any opinion could: this was not a gentle reshuffle. It was a reset.<\/p>\n The riders who define Roland\u2019s legacy, and what they did with the opportunity<\/p>\n Roland\u2019s lasting contribution is not a monuments palmar\u00e8s. It is a pipeline.<\/p>\n Noemi Ruegg is a clean example of the team\u2019s development function: a rider who came through a structure where responsibility was available early. Elise Chabbey\u2019s early link to the project fits the same category, a rider with clear engine and ambition who benefited from a programme that did not reduce her to a background role. Letizia Borghesi\u2019s stint is the reminder that riders can outgrow this kind of platform quickly once they show reliability.<\/p>\n![\"WC23](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/WC23-Olga-Zabelinskaya-Medium.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Novolodskaya](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/novolodskaya-close-to-victory-in-the-giro-rosa-2020.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Tamara](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Tamara-Dronova-scaled.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Roland](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Roland-Cogeas-2022-Jersey-jpg.webp.webp\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"29\/07\/2023](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/20230729TDFFAZ0010-A.S.O._Thomas_Maheux-1024x683.webp.webp\"\/)
Photo Credit: ASO-Thomas Maheux<\/p>\n![\"2024-Grand-Prix-Presidente-Roland\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2024-Grand-Prix-Presidente-Roland-1024x683.webp.webp\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Sylvie](\"https:\/\/procyclinguk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Sylvie-Swinkels-Roland-2025-819x1024.avif\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Petra](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Petra-Stiasny.jpeg\"\/)
Petra Stiasny<\/p>\n