'I'm afraid that the WorldTour could implode at some point, but let's see' - Elisa Longo Borghini warns current drain on grassroots racing could wreak havoc higher up in sport

The UAE Tour Women, the second WorldTour stage race of 2026, is well underway in the Middle East, and right now, defending champion Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) is in the throes, yet again, of battling for another overall victory. So, in some ways, it feels like business as usual for women's cycling as another new season begins to unfold. Yet if only it were so simple.

With 12 years and counting as a professional, many of them at the highest level - it's more than a decade since Longo Borghini took a breakthrough triumph at the 2013 Trofeo Alfredo Binda - fans are also well aware that in that time Longo Borghini has built herself a well-earned reputation as a shrewd observer and analyst of a lot of the underlying trends in the sport. And as things currently stand, she recognises that some elements of where women's cycling is headed could not be more beneficial.
But, as it emerges in this interview with Cyclingnews, others also worry her considerably.

On the one hand, it's true that the number of hours of television coverage continues to rise in women's cycling, that the Tour de France Femmes reached record viewing figures in 2025 - up by 500,000 to a daily average of 2.7 million inside France - and that Pauline Ferrand-Prévot's spectacular Tour victory, long-awaited by the host country, all helped give cycling's biggest bike race a significant boost in terms of coverage. However, Longo Borghini is also aware that what is a major success story in some respects has, in other ways, been accompanied by a financial and sporting drain on its foundations.

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Nor is the top level wholly financially healthy. It's been pointed out by multiple observers that there are 15 team licences on offer in the women's WorldTour, only 14 have been accepted, with teams insisting over the past weeks and months that the soaring costs and changed regulations on participating in the biggest races make for much greater demands on budgets and riders.

Just earlier this week, Claude Sun, the team manager of the now-defunct squad Ceratizit, told Cyclingnews in writer Emma Magnus' deep dive into the subject that "In my opinion, the development of women's cycling over the last four years was too fast.

"I can imagine that the UCI wanted to achieve the same level [as men] for women: teams, culture, budget," Sun said. "But they forgot one thing: the sponsor."

What Longo Borghini specifically points to as a concern is at the grassroots level, where teams with much smaller budgets and lower-level races cannot handle the costs and are forced to close.

The consequence is that, as she puts it to Cyclingnews, the foundations of the sport could collapse underneath the higher races, raising her concerns for the WorldTour's long-term survival. Or as she says starkly, "I'm afraid that the WorldTour could implode at some point - but let's see."

The WorldTour: a two-edged weapon?

Even if she's qualifying her statement by saying it's only a possibility, not something definite, Longo Borghini paints a much less rosy picture of the progress of women's cycling than TV figures or the runaway success of the Tour de France would suggest.

Instead, the 34-year-old points to rapidly folding middle- to lower-ranking teams and fewer mid- to lower-level races. All of which makes it much harder for talent to break through, because, as Longo Borghini says, not all top riders are ready to climb the ladder of success so quickly that they are already impacting at 19 or 20. Some, simply, need time and more space to grow.

So while she says she appreciates that there are some bigger teams with bigger budgets now - hers likely amongst them - "I would love that the small squads will not disappear because that's the main issue we have," she claims.

"The WorldTour is growing, drastically, but then the small teams are collapsing and disappearing, and this means that amongst the young riders, not so many can survive.

"Maybe you risk losing some talent just because from junior to elite is a big step, and you never know, maybe somebody is already ready after the second year in juniors to step into the elite category, but someone else is a little bit behind, and they need some years to adapt.

"So you are in a small team, and you have the possibility to do like a nice calendar, then you can develop. Otherwise," she states categorically, "You lose a lot of talent."

It's been reported elsewhere that the issue of Continental teams no longer being able to race in WorldTour events from 2026 is also troubling, discouraging smaller-level investments that can often lead to much bigger backing in the future. Soaring budgets, also reported in Cyclingnews earlier this week, are leading to a much harsher reality of have and have-nots.

Last but not least, the fact that only 14 teams are racing at the WorldTour level, despite 15 licences being available, is a stark contrast to the situation in the men's WorldTour. In the latter, the fight to enter the top division has had a significant effect on the racing scene over the last three years and been an entire news narrative in itself.

As she sees it, the problem is not so much commercial interest in the WorldTour as a gradual hollowing out of the talent available to it, as the lower part of the 'pyramid' of racing and future talent disappears.

"Yes, exactly," she confirms, "because if you don't have the generational change, then… but yeah, we will see.

"I don't want to be misinterpreted, because it's absolutely stunning that more teams are investing in a women's squad, for example AG Insurance or Fenix. A lot of teams have a strong roster and are putting more effort into women's cycling and stuff like that. So that's definitely a good trend."

But as she points out, now there are only a handful of Italian teams at Continental level - five in total - and none in the upper two leagues, at all. Rewind 10 years, and there were seven in the highest division alone, and of a variety of levels and investment that made the process of progressing upwards for a young pro one with many more gradual 'steps'.

Not only that, but there is an equally troublesome issue with races. "It's exactly the same as the small teams. They are disappearing a lot," Longo Borghini says, which creates a vicious circle of fewer opportunities to race and fewer sponsors as a result.

At 34, Longo Borghini can easily remember the times when women's cycling had a much tougher time of it in general, as she discussed in an interview with Cyclingnews' Matilda Price earlier last year. The winner of two Tours of Flanders nine years apart in 2015 and 2024, she recollected, "Once [at Flanders] we got changed in the square on camping chairs. Most of the teams did not have a bus. You had to look for a bar to get your jersey on," Longo Borghini recalled.

"And now everyone comes to the race with a bus, with a truck, there are more people around, there is more attention. I think it has hugely changed from even five years ago, not even ten years ago."

And yet again, there are positive developments for other races. Longo Borghini could not be more enthusiastic about the 2026 Giro d'Italia Women's date change, for example. She points out that just as the Tour de France Femmes date shift already proved, moving the Giro in the calendar means the Italian Grand Tour 'no longer risks being cannibalised by the Tour' and will instead benefit from having its own place in the media spotlight.

Yet again, as her earlier statement shows, even if the bigger events are going from strength to strength, she can't forget that the smaller races have yet find a recipe for survival - and by many accounts, it's getting harder to do so.

Speaking Italian

But even with a sport in flux like women's cycling evidently is right now, there are still bike races out there to be won and lost, and Longo Borghini certainly has not forgotten that either.

2025 was a rollercoaster year in many ways, with victory in the UAE followed by a crash-out and major concussion in Flanders, followed by a second straight triumph in the Giro d'Italia - only for disaster to strike again at the Tour de France when she fell ill and had to abandon.

Then there was the episode of negative racing in the elite women's World Championships road race by many top riders - and to her credit, she is anything but reserved about admitting her share in the collective blame - and that was followed by a kind of redemption with two fine one-day wins on home soil in the Italian October Classics.

Few riders, in fact, can say they had such ups and downs, but within that, there was one area of steadily increasing stability. What is different for her personally compared with 14 months ago is that she's now fully settled at UAE Team ADQ after her first year there in 2025. Overall, she says she's very satisfied with the move. Or as she puts it with a broad grin, a year on from December 2024, when she described the move from Lidl-Trek as getting out of her comfort zone, "I've found another comfort zone."

"It's been different for sure, but I have to say that, like 12 months ago, I was here and I was - everything was new, there was a different approach. So I was much more, not stressed, but yeah, you know, you had to adapt.

"Now I'm definitely feeling at home. It's easier to be more relaxed and to go around the hotel knowing where to go and who to ask. You know, stuff like that. I found an environment where I can be 100% myself, and I'm accepted for what I am as a person, and I can tell you it's something really special.

"It was quite a big change, it can sound silly, but especially because for the first time in my whole career, I found myself in a very Italian team. Many of the riders are Italian, and last year, in the first training ride that we did, I was surrounded by Italians, so it was strange for me to speak my native language.

"Most of the time at the races, we do speak Italian because the bus driver is Ukrainian but speaks fluent Italian, too. Most of the mechanics are speaking Italian, that's been the biggest change, to be honest. At first, it was quite strange, but then I really found riders and stuff that made me be the best I could be."

Top of the list of her successes was winning the Giro - "definitely" - and it made it even more special to conquer her home race for a second straight year with a new squad.

"It was something we planned in advance and we really wanted to win it, we studied the parcours, we had a project and we worked very hard towards it. As a team, we really wanted it, and we achieved it, so that's something very great," she concludes. "It was a really cohesive group, and we are proud of what we achieved."

'Every rider has a race that's like cursed: mine's the Tour de France'

If there was a downside - and that's debatable - it's that it only made the contrast with the Tour de France much more noticeable. Even before the race, Longo Borghini described the Tour as being "a little bit of my nightmare," telling Cyclingnews, "In 2023, I didn't finish it because of an infection. In 2024, I eliminated myself before, because I crashed and I wasn't able to walk for five days.”

After all those setbacks, you'd have thought that the gods of fortune would grant Longo Borghini something of a reprieve in 2025. But no. Gastroenteritis hit her in the early days, causing her to abandon.

Just as Soudal-QuickStep had done after Remco Evenepoel quit the men's Tour de France with their memorable victory for Valentin Paret-Peintre on the Ventoux, UAE Team ADQ certainly stepped up to the breach both before and after their leader's exit, thanks to stage winners Mavi García and Maeva Squiban. But Longo Borghini could only watch from the sidelines.

"It's kind of unfair because I love the Tour de France, of course, but in one way or in another, ever since 2023 that I either haven't finished it or I didn't even start it. Not because of things that are under my control, but just because of life. So I would really love to finish the Tour de France this year. It's my humble goal," she reflects.

"It seems like, you know, every rider seems to have a race that is, like, cursed, and for me it's the Tour de France. But I love it. So that's my goal for next year, definitely.

"Maybe having more time in 2026 between the two races [Giro and Tour] will give me the possibility to rest a little bit more. Maybe, maybe just that or maybe just some luck."

"You can really say this was a shit race."

On the plus side, she points out, she can draw comfort from the fact that she didn't do anything wrong, so although obviously disappointed by what happened, she didn't feel afterwards that she had made a mistake. It didn't cost her anything, as a result, to come back into full race mode.

It feels more likely that the World Championships could have had a greater impact, purely because, as she freely admits, the errors were ones that could and should have been corrected.

Again, in an interview last year, her interest in racing the 2025 Worlds was palpable, not just because of the prospect of fighting for a top result. For her, Africa as a continent has some almost mystic connotations - "It's where life began," she once told Cyclingnews when discussing the Worlds a year ago last December - all of which combined to make it a very special event. Until the event itself happened.

When I couch to her in somewhat delicate terms that the women's road race and the lack of collaboration behind the breakaway made for "a complicated situation" in which the big names effectively cancelled each other out, she interrupts my polite phrase by saying bluntly, "You can really say this was a shit race."

"It was definitely a bad race where all the top riders fought to make the others lose, and for me it created a very bad image for female cycling because that's not the way we are usually riding, and I - I take my part of responsibility for that, and I believe that all the other top riders take their own part."

Yet she shows her characteristic capacity for taking the broadest of perspectives again, by adding that "But on the other side, I just want to say that for me, the rider that won the World Championships [Canadian Magdaleine Vallieres - Ed.] was the bravest and the strongest there, because she dared, she did dare to go in a breakaway and she tried to win the World Championships.

"So for me it's a full chapeau to her and a shame for us. I mean, if you never try, you never succeed, and you never fail."

Hackneyed cliché it may be, but often the secret to success is that you never stop learning, and Longo Borghini says she is definitely aware that there were some key takeaways from Rwanda, despite the disappointment. Her own lesson from the 2025 Worlds, she says, is that "Next time I have to go full gas, no matter what the other riders are doing."

It remains to be seen where or if Longo Borghini can reap the benefits of what she discovered in the 2025 Worlds in 2026, but she certainly doesn't seem to be doubting that her bigger and lesser targets remain in place for yet another season. There's finishing the Tour de France, for one thing, but also she says, "For sure, being good at the Giro and maybe winning some nice races, but no one in particular."

"I don't mind winning, you know, in general," she concludes with another big grin, "everything I can win, I want to win." She's not, she agrees, "going to be picky."

So to quote the great British comedian Billy Connolly, "It's good to know that in an uncertain world, some things don't ever change." And even though women's cycling is a very different place from what it used to be, and as Longo Borghini points out, not all those changes are necessarily for the better, her ambitions and desire to go into all her races with all guns blazing are just as solid as they used to be. If not more so. Roll on 2026.