Professional Continental team Argos-Shimano has sent its application dossier to try to step up into the UCI World Tour next season.

"It's the next logical step," team manager Iwan Spekenbrink told NOS.

This means the team could become the third Dutch WorldTour team after Rabobank and Vacansoleil-DCM. To be a WorldTour team, Argos-Shimano must pass four selection criteria: one sporting, one financial, one organisational and one ethical.
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The team tried to take the step last year, as well, but failed only by four points on the sporting criteria.

"We hope that our results will get us a good placing," said Spekenbrink.

The team has scored 22 victories this year, all of them taken by only two riders of the squad - Marcel Kittel and John Degenkolb.

The team has decided to let five riders to leave, which means we will not see Ronan van Zandbeek, Thomas Bonnin, Alexandre Geniez, Roger Kluge and Dominic Klemme in the team, but other riders will join.

Spekenbrink said that he was "currently busy negotiating with a number of interesting riders. We expect to have between 27 and 30 riders for the upcoming season."

"In November, the UCI will announce which teams have applied for a licence. Then it will announce the follow-up procedure. It's possible that we will only know in December if we get a licence or not."