Lotto-Soudal will skip the World Championships team time trial in Doha, Qatar. Th potential reward does not justify the travel cost.

"There are teams who go to the Worlds to win, but we go to perform as well as possible – 6th to 10th is the best possible scenario for us," General manager Marc Sergeant told Cyclingnews. "The other thing is the WorldTour points. Last year we gained 130 points with our seventh-place finish, but this year there are none on offer so we don't have to go to defend our WorldTour ranking. The third reason is visibility. You have to be honest, it's only the four or five top teams who get any camera time. For the others it's much less."

To avoid a potential boycott, the UCI decided to offer € 2000 for each team at the start of the event but according to the Belgian tea , their trip to the Middle East would still cost between € 40,000 and € 50,000. "It doesn't justify the costs. For us, after reflecting on the arguments for and against, it was pretty clear to decide not to go", Sergeant concluded.