In an era of UCI promotion/relegation cycles and teams creating calendars around points scoring, EF Education-EasyPost CEO Jonathan Vaughters wants to keep his team from falling into the "anticlimactic and boring" way of racing he believes it breeds.
Vaughters' EF Education programme have built up a reputation of racing aggressively, chasing stage wins and often targeting jerseys outside of the leaders at big races. In going all out for such, they have sometimes missed on potential top 10 finishes on GC or a chance to score more UCI points.
While, of course, remaining in cycling's top division – the UCI WorldTour – remains a vital ambition, Vaughters isn't willing to give up on continuing to strive for big wins in place of giving into the "absurd" UCI points system.
"Talking about UCI points, I never want to see this team have one guy finish fourth, one guy 11th and another in 19th just so we get a bunch of points. To me, that's just so anticlimactic and boring and really sort of a cynical way of racing," Vaughters told Cyclingnews before speaking on stage at Rouleur Live.
"What I want to see is that the entire team is behind someone, or a plan to get someone to win the race. Even if the odds are totally against this, and even if it completely explodes the entire team and we get zero UCI points because we blew ourselves to bits and our best rider was 84th place, that's OK.
"At least we went in with a plan to win and tried to execute that. It didn't work out for whatever reason, but we did everything we could."
Also, with a budget smaller than that of the 'super teams' such as UAE Team Emirates and Visma-Lease a Bike, and a less stacked all-around roster, Vaughters meticulously plans his team's goals to ensure they can be winners in some way.
"The way we're constructing this team and the objectives that we have, are going to be different than a team like UAE. But from the metrics that we wanted to achieve, for instance, winning the polka-dot jersey in the Tour de France," said Vaughters.
"That's been a long-term dream objective of ours but I think it symbolizes how we focus on doing things for our team. Do we have a sprinter? No. Do we have somebody who's truly capable of challenging to win the Tour de France on GC? No. We didn't have that either. So then you go into the race and say 'What can we achieve?'
"What I really try to avoid with this team is saying, 'OK, we're gonna go in and gonna get sixth on GC'. Sixth place on GC for the majority of sponsors, financial backers and fans, it's totally meaningless."
Instead, EF opted for targeting the polka-dot jersey with Richard Carapaz at the Tour, a jersey they had occupied with Neilson Powless and Magnus Cort in recent years but not actually won. Carapaz brought home a huge stage win from the break but also the jersey they originally set their sights on in a hugely successful Tour campaign.
For Vaughters, it's all about chasing these realistic ambitions but also staying true to the team's ideology. There's no room for optimised UCI points chasing for the men in pink.
"It's representative of the way we did the entire season, we took apart each race and looked at what can we do that is impactful, interesting, fun and engaging - let's go after that. Let's not worry about, for instance, UCI points," said the team boss.
"I couldn't care less. I think it's absurd, the whole ranking system, and designed by people that don't really know what they're doing. I don't care what we're ranked, just as long as we're not ranked 19th, right?
"But what I do care about is doing things like winning the polka-dot jersey at the Tour de France, winning a stage at the Tour de France, winning a stage in the Giro d'Italia, that's stuff that makes the team different."
Avoiding relegation after 2022 scare
EF Education-EasyPost finished two spots from relegation after fighting hard during the 2020-2022 cycle, which saw Lotto Dstny and Israel-Premier Tech go down from the WorldTour. It's not a process Vaughters is hoping to have to redo. Vaughters criticised the system then too.
"In that last relegation cycle, we had to spend the second half of that year racing in a very cynical way and just collecting points. And man did that turn me off," continued Vaughters. "It just felt wrong. I mean, it just felt like we were not even there to win. We're just there to grift off of the other teams and finish fourth and eighth."
With the men's team sitting safely in 12th out of the 18 spots that will stay up in 2026, it doesn't look likely that they will have to worry about it, however, allowing Vaughters to apply his top riders at their swashbuckling best in the coming season.
"I never want to see us get into that position again because I like to race all-or-nothing. And the riders that we have, such as Ben Healy or Richard Carapaz, are guys that also like to race all-or-nothing," he said.
Carapaz will be EF's main leader again in 2025 and is set to ride two Grand Tours, targeting GC at one and stages at the other just as he did this past season. The former Giro d'Italia winner is among the top climbers in the world, however, isn't the easiest to keep focused despite his talents.
"Richard is the most talented rider I've ever worked with. He's unbelievably gifted but he's a bit of a wild horse. I would say he's anything but the very programmed, very focused, studious sort of athlete that we're seeing competing at the top level right now - the very mechanical and robotic," said Vaughters of his GC star.
"He's the opposite of Jonas Vingegaard, someone who is watching his diet and watching what he's doing training 365 days a year. Richard comes up to big emotional highs and really performs when he's on that emotional high. And then when he's not, he definitely is not as mechanical and robotic and focused, and he kind of just lives his life, right?
"So with him, you have to realize that that while sometimes it's frustrating that his full, true potential and talent doesn't always come out, but that that's just who he is as a person, and you've got to work around it and figure out, you know how to bring the best of him out. He's got to want it first, I can't force him."
Vaughters isn't sure yet if it'll be the Giro and Tour, or Tour and Vuelta, he takes on, however, what is certain is how much the Ecuadorian will characterise the racing. He rarely starts a Grand Tour without leaving his mark on it somehow.
Topping fourth at the Vuelta, a stage win at the Tour and the polka-dot jersey to go with it won't be easy, but at 31, Carapaz is still among the climbing elite of the peloton. With such a huge haul of points already racked up in the two years of the current relegation cycle, they can apply their focus on staying true to aggressive, exciting racing too.
