July is notoriously the month of the Tour de France, a race that, due to its status, prestige, and the names of those who take part, captures the attention of the entire cycling world and beyond. Its grandeur and its endless cascade of daily stories make it almost impossible to look away from France and focus on everything else happening in the vast cycling universe. Because obviously, in an increasingly global sport with an ever-more packed calendar, something is happening simultaneously with the great yellow ball of July, and for some teams, it might even be more important than what is taking place across the Alps.

Specifically, we are referring to the only one-week stage race that, among the first two world calendars (World Tour and Pro Series), will take place simultaneously with the Grande Boucle, namely the Tour of Qinghai Lake. Scheduled from July 6th to 13th, the oldest existing Chinese race (rebranded this year for its 24th edition as the Tour of Magnificient Qinghai) will indeed be the main event of the month for almost all ProTeams not registered for the Tour, and the reasons are multiple.

UCI POINTS AND TOP 30 SITUATION

The first, and clearest, reasons lie in the duration and categorization of the event: with its eight stages and 1,323.7 total kilometers (numbers that make it the sixth longest race of the entire season and even the fourth behind the three Grand Tours when considering only the two main international calendars), the Asian event represents an extremely appetizing opportunity to accumulate points in succession and, for some teams, to move away from the critical area of the annual UCI ranking, that is, around the 30th position. Finishing the season no higher than this portion of the standings, we recall, is the conditio sine qua non to receive a wild card for the 2026 Grand Tours, a showcase eagerly awaited by all teams at this level who, from now until autumn, must exploit all the opportunities the road will offer them, starting precisely with those in Chinese territory.

The current situation, thanks especially to the considerable comeback made in recent months by Solution Tech-Vini Fantini, sees the Spanish Equipo Kern Pharma (28th with 1,682 points), VF Group-Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè (29th with 1,647), Polti-VisitMalta (30th with 1,614) and precisely the team of Serse Parsani (31st with 1,522) enclosed in a handkerchief of just 160 points that effectively makes them the formations with the greatest need to accumulate as many points as possible. However, this discussion does not exclude two teams hunting for results to avoid being sucked downward, such as Unibet Tietema Rockets (26th with 2,145 points), Burgos-BH-Burpellet (27th with 1,928 points) and another like Euskaltel-Euskadi (32nd with 1,101 points) that desperately needs to beef up its tally to aim for the 2026 Vuelta Espana: for the Basques, as for all other representative teams at the start, the Tour of Qinghai Lake can be a succulent chance not to be missed.

PRESENT AND FUTURE

There are other reasons why the participating teams and their standard-bearers will race the Chinese stage race with a knife between their teeth. If until now there have been teams capable of adding one success after another (this is the case, for example, of the already mentioned Solution Tech-Vini Fantini which with 16 triumphs is the most winning ProTeam of 2025), there are others that, on the contrary, have so far struggled to raise their arms to the sky. Euskaltel-Euskadi (3 victories) but also Equipo Kern Pharma, VF Group-Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè (both at 2) and even more so Polti-VisitMalta (excluding the national championship victory of the Maltese Buttigieg, still hunting for their first seasonal success) are all teams that have had few joys and who in China, in a few days, will certainly try to take some revenge on a 2025 that has proved less fruitful.

In addition, another aspect to consider is that of contracts since, according to ProCyclingStats, 122 (of which 33 currently employed by a World Tour or ProTeam formation) of the 152 riders who will line up at the Xining start have no guaranteed agreement for the next season. Therefore, standing out, less than a month from the official opening of the cycling market session, by imposing oneself in a stage or prevailing in one of the four classifications of the Chinese race, could help many guys bring the spotlight of teams and agents onto themselves, accelerate potential negotiations and facilitate the signing of a new contract to remain in top-level cycling.

Personal motivations and team objectives are thus destined to intertwine at the Tour of Magnificient Qinghai 2025, a race in which, as in the past, many will throw themselves into the fray to start the summer in the best possible way and ensure, both to themselves and potentially to their current teams, a rosier future and months ahead more characterized by tranquility than by anxiety.

Photocredit: Tour of Qinghai Lake