There’s no room for the Rockets at the Tour de France as wildcards are handed to TotalEnergies and Caja Rural.
Cor Vos
By the end of 2025, it seemed official confirmation was all that stood between the Unibet Rose Rockets (or just ‘The Rockets’, to use the team’s franchise name) and the 2026 Tour de France. However, on Friday the ASO announced that TotalEnergies and Caja Rural-Seguros RGA had been chosen to receive the two wildcards for this summer’s race, ending – or at least postponing – the dreams of the Rockets and their literally fearless leader Bas Tietema.
The news that Spain’s best ProTeam would go to the Tour in the Rockets’ stead was a surprise, but frankly it shouldn’t have been. There is a certain logic to this decision. But it’s a logic that can be comprehensively unravelled. It’s also a completely unsurprising move from Tour organiser ASO which can always be relied upon to cleave aggravatingly close to tradition.
Why it makes sense
Shortly after the news came down – softened 24 hours earlier by a report in Le Parisien – the Tour’s big boss Christian Prudhomme offered an explanation of his organisation’s decision.
“We applied the same principle as in previous years, that is, we looked at the ProTeams’ ranking at the end of 2025,” Prudhomme told the AFP news agency. “Caja Rural was initially 25th, but due to the disappearance of Arkéa-B&B Hotels and the merger between the Lotto team and Intermarché-Wanty, they have moved up to 23rd.”
It’s simple logic: The Tour is the biggest race of the season, so if 23 teams are to participate, they should be the 23 best in the world – fair enough, even if that’s based on a flawed system, one that isn’t exactly representative of who is actually going to turn up to the race, but we’ll get to that. It’s worth noting that the ASO has two Grand Tours in its portfolio, and the other two (eligible) Spanish ProTeams were announced as Vuelta wildcards, also on Friday.
You can’t really argue with how the stats and standings guided Prudhomme et al. when they’re laid out before you. Caja Rural scored 3,924 UCI points to the Rockets’ 3,225 in 2025, both teams logging close to 200 race days. By almost any measure – I’ve exhausted plenty – the Spanish ProTeam was absolutely more successful than the Rockets last season, a point the team has been justified in emphasising when asked.
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