There is no doubt that UAE Team Emirates is the number one team in the world, as they've sat atop the UCI World Rankings since February. But the team of World Champion, Tour de France, and Giro d'Italia winner Tadej Pogačar apparently broke a record held since 2000 when they won their 76th race with 20 different riders.
Juan Sebastian Molano claimed stage 2 of the CRO Race on Wednesday, becoming the 20th rider of UAE Team Emirates' 30-rider roster to enjoy a victory this year.
According to UAE Team Emirates' press release, the previous record for individual wins amongst a professional team was 19, held by Mapei-Quickstep since 2000.
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HTC-Colombia won the most victories by a team in a single year in recent memory, with 85 wins in 2009, but it was won by 16 different riders.
This year, 22 of the team's wins have come from Pogačar - the world's number 1 rider since mid-2021 - who began the season by winning Strade Bianche and then won the Volta a Catalunya with four stage wins. He continued his victory streak at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and then won the Giro d'Italia by almost 10 minutes, taking six stage wins along the way.
In the Tour de France, he won the overall and six stages as well before taking a well-deserved break. He came back with a win in the GP de Montréal before he soloed for almost 100 kilometres en route to winning the elite men's road race at the UCI Road World Championships.
Marc Hirschi was the next-most prolific winner with eight including the San Sebastian Classic so far, while Brandon McNulty won seven including the opening time trial of the Vuelta a España. Adam Yates won six races, and Juan Ayuso claimed four.
Three races were won by Isaac Del Toro, Finn Fisher-Black, Antonio Morgado, Diego Ulissi and Tim Wellens. João Almeida won two, and single-race winners include Molano, Nils Politt, Domen Novak, Marc Soler, Pavel Sivakov and Jay Vine.
The team is far from done for the season. Pogačar is scheduled to debut his new rainbow jersey at the Giro dell'Emilia on Saturday and will continue to compete at the Tre Valli Varesine on October 8 and Il Lombardia on October 12.
