As the 2025 cycling calendar turns toward its final chapter,
UAE Team Emirates – XRG stand on the brink of a potential milestone. With the
Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and spring classics already behind them, only
the Vuelta a España, World Championships, and Il Lombardia remain among the
season’s biggest events. The team has already collected 72 victories this year,
just nine shy of matching their 2024 total of 81, which ranked as the third
most wins by a professional team in history.

Their first triumph of 2025 came in January, when Jhonatan
Narváez took stage five of the Santos Tour Down Under. Most recently, Brandon
McNulty delivered both a time trial stage win and the overall title at the Tour
de Pologne. Between those bookends, the team’s roster, led by Tadej Pogacar,
Juan Ayuso, Isaac Del Toro, João Almeida, and others, has dominated the
majority of races they have started. In short, UAE have once again been the
team to beat.The benchmark they are chasing belongs to Team Columbia – HTC,
who recorded a staggering 87 wins in 2009, a season powered by Mark Cavendish’s
23 victories, the highest individual tally of that year, with André Greipel
adding 20 and Edvald Boasson Hagen contributing 12. That same team also holds
the second spot on the all-time list with 82 wins in 2008. UAE’s 2024 total of
81 sits just behind, making the prospect of surpassing Columbia – HTC’s
long-standing record a realistic target for the rest of 2025.

Pogacar’s remaining schedule for UAE includes the Grand Prix
Cycliste de Québec and Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, where he will start as
favourite, and Il Lombardia, where he will attempt to claim a fifth consecutive
victory. Ayuso and Almeida are set to lead the team at the Vuelta, where they
will aim to topple Jonas Vingegaard in the general classification while also
hunting stage wins.

They still have a long way to go, but the combination of
late-season one-day races, stage wins at the Vuelta, and the monument in
Lombardy presents multiple pathways to closing the gap to 87.

The question is no longer whether UAE Team Emirates – XRG
are the strongest squad in the peloton; it is whether they can maintain their
relentless winning pace in the season’s closing months. If Pogacar, Ayuso,
Almeida, and their supporting cast deliver as expected, there is a possibility
that 2025 will finally be the year that Columbia – HTC’s record falls.