uci world tour team wins 2022

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The Outer Line: A 10-year look at UCI WorldTour team performance

A look at uci worldtour team wins — and trends — from 2012 through 2021..

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Multiple performance, economic and organizational metrics can be dissected to evaluate the competitive performance of UCI WorldTour cycling teams. The Outer Line published a brief survey of historical team performance two years ago; and this more thorough analysis updates that evaluation with 10 years of men’s WorldTour data, revealing unanticipated insights into the sport and the key drivers of success in managing pro teams. For this new analysis, we primarily analyzed team wins, podiums, and top-10 race placings, as well as the ProCyclingStats  annual point totals.

(As previously discussed , the UCI has its own point system for ranking and selection processes, but the PCS system is more detailed and user-friendly and is generally considered to be a more precise estimate of performance; in addition, the UCI completely changed its points system a few years ago, making longer-term trend analysis and comparisons impossible. Also, a few teams that participated in the World Tour for only one or two years, generally at the beginning of this period — including Vacansoleil, Cannondale, Euskaltel, IAM, and Europcar — were not included in this analysis.)

Analyzing WorldTour wins

We first evaluate the number of WorldTour wins by each team, shown in chart 1. This data is densely clustered but we show it for three reasons: (1) to graphically demonstrate the “amplitude” in the fortunes of most WorldTour teams (i.e., the extent to which most teams bounce up and down year-to-year), which, as we will see, is a recurring theme in this analysis; (2) the apparent but uniform 2020 performance dip due to the COVID pandemic-shortened season that is apparent in most of the following charts; and (3) the dramatic and sustained dominance of Deceuninck-Quick-Step (DQS), now Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl (QST), that single green line standing clear above all the other teams. And as we’ll see, this dominance is not just reflected in team wins; it repeats itself in the metrics shown below.

Also read: The Outer Line – Is it time to shake up the pro cycling calendar?

As discussed in more detail elsewhere , DQS always seems to have at least one rider capable of winning a race, no matter its style, profile, or length. Although we’ve often been critical of team manager Patrick Lefevere’s bombastic public persona and treatment of his riders, there can be no denying the team’s competitive success. While many teams have had two- or three-year winning streaks, none comes close to the consistency of DQS.

We qualitatively filtered out those teams that have shown identifiable improvement or regression over the last 10 years to better parse the trend lines and make chart 1 more understandable. Some tentative conclusions and hypotheses emerge as a result.

Chart 2 shows three teams that demonstrate a mostly upward-trending performance: Jumbo-Visma and the relatively newer UAE Team Emirates and Bahrain Victorious. Jumbo-Visma is a longstanding WorldTour organization (previously known as Rabobank, Blanco, and Belkin) but has reinvented itself under the watchful eye of general manager Richard Plugge over the past nine years. The same is essentially true of UAE, which evolved from the longstanding Lampre team, thanks to the injection of considerable new funding and the fortuitous signing of superstar Tadej Pogačar. Bahrain snagged 28 wins in just its second WorldTour season and seems poised to continue improving—especially as new funding enabled the acquisition of riders like Sonny Colbrelli, Mikel Landa, and Gino Mäder.

Perhaps as a direct outcome of the “makeover” of these three teams, each shows long-term upward trends, even with the significant 2020 Covid-related dip. The notable question that emerges from chart 2 is simply why there aren’t more teams represented here; however, no other teams demonstrate a similar, consistent long-term improvement trend.

Chart 3 highlights several teams that have demonstrated a steadier or “flatter” performance during the past 10 years. This is a slightly deceptive chart, as it includes teams with both higher and lower numbers of actual victories. For example, DQS stands out with a consistent 60 to 70 annual victories. Likewise, INEOS (previously Team Sky) has turned in a consistent and top-ranking performance through most of this period. On the other hand, also included here are EF Education-First (now, EF Education-EasyPost for 2022), Groupama-FDJ (that had more wins than INEOS in 2020), and Trek-Segafredo, all of which have produced similarly consistent results, albeit with win totals in the middle of the pack. These teams, generating more like 15 to 20 wins a year, are not the strongest or best-financed teams in the sport, but they should nevertheless be credited with the ability to generate relatively consistent performance year after year.

Chart 4 examines teams with a decline in trending performance, although each peaked with 35 or 40 victories for at least one year. Nonetheless, most posted just five to 10 wins in 2021. Several (perhaps conflicting) conclusions could be hypothesized here. Some of these teams could attribute their downward trends to sponsor uncertainty or general financial instability—this has certainly been the case for Astana, BikeExchange, and NextHash-Qhubeka. On the other hand, one could simultaneously observe that two of these teams, Movistar and Lotto-Soudal, have enjoyed consistent sponsor stability and hence few of the distractions around sponsorship that had to impact the other teams. So, overall, chart 4 does not correlate financial security with greater success.

DSM is the odd team out here, having struggled to recapture past winning form. It has actually improved its financial situation by acquiring a stronger sponsor and strategically “selling” talented riders in mid-contract. However, DSM’s biggest sporting issue seems to be an inability to hold onto winning riders due to reportedly strict internal rules and expectations.

Of historical interest here (referenced in chart 1) was the dramatic slumps of CCC (formerly BMC) and Katusha—two teams no longer in the sport. CCC went from 48 wins in 2017 to a mere six in 2019 and was gone a year later. Katusha’s collapse was almost as dramatic, from 40 wins in 2015 to just five in both 2018 and 2019, and then relinquishing its WorldTour license to the upstart Israel Start-Up Nation team. Despite our previous discussions to the contrary , the history of CCC and Katusha suggests that a collapsing-performance trend may drive off sponsors and spell the ultimate death of the team; in other words, winning is important. But more surprising is the fact that, according to a L’Équipe report in 2016, these two teams had the second and third largest budgets of any teams in the WorldTour at the time—underlining the theory that money is not the only determinant of success in pro cycling.

Analyzing podium and top 10 finishes

First and second place is often determined by less than the width of a tire; first place may be separated from 10th place by a second or two. So, it makes sense to extend this analysis beyond simple wins and look also at the podium and top-10-placing statistics. This analytic profile flattens the amplitude of the corresponding charts, particularly for top-10 finishes, leading to some more nuanced conclusions.

Chart 5 is another dense cluster of trendlines showing the number of top-10 finishes for each of the 20-or-so teams rather than outright victories. These flatter or less “wavy” lines suggest that total top 10s might be a steadier or more predictable way of assessing overall team performance. Most teams are clustered between 100 and 250 top-10 finishes per year.

This chart more accurately measures the true strength or “health” of a team by accounting for “luck.” For example, a few bad breaks and injuries can drastically decrease a team’s number of wins and podiums, but it takes an overall team performance drop-off to cause a serious decrease in top-10s. On the flip side, it would take a real team performance bump to cause an increase.

Also read: The Outer Line – Should pro cycling consider a salary cap?

Comparing a team’s number of podium finishes relative to its top 10s, as shown in chart 6, provides a simple metric for a team’s “conversion rate”—how many of its top 10s are also podium finishes.  This helps identify under- and over-achieving teams. For example, for the 2021 season, DQS and Jumbo-Visma stood above the rest of the WorldTour teams with almost half of their top 10s being appearances on the podium, while AG2R-Citroën brought up the rear with only half of that conversion rate.

The metric could be used to identify teams that have difficulty converting fourth- to 10th-place finishes into podium finishes like Intermarché in its initial year or potential “sleeping giants,” such as AG2R, DSM, or Astana, which seem to have funding and talent to convert a far greater share of their podiums but haven’t for one reason or another.

Evaluating PCS points

Top-10 finishes may be a more nuanced way to view team performance compared to outright victories, but we can extend this approach by looking at the overall points generated by each team. This is the most detailed and nuanced measure of evaluating team performance. Even though most fans may focus on or only remember the winner of the grand tours or the monument classics, a detailed review of team points should, in theory, be a better guide to the true performance ranking of all WorldTour teams.

The all-teams PCS points view is another dense cluster of crisscrossing lines, but this approach yields new insights when extracting subsets of teams. For example, if we only look at teams with an increasing trend over time, DQS, Jumbo-Visma, and UAE still stand out, but now Bahrain Victorious also demonstrates a positive trend. Bahrain might not have won as many races or stood on a podium as many times, but overall it performed at a level more commensurate with the top players.

Of note is chart 7, which compares teams that exhibit a flat or slightly decreasing performance in terms of PCS points. This view captures a seemingly disproportionate number of teams—roughly half of the pro peloton—that have been flat or somewhat declining over the full 10-year time frame, whether at a higher or lower absolute level. So, while INEOS has generated huge visibility for its string of victories at the Tour de France during this period, its performance in terms of points is much more pedestrian—which may be a result of the team’s specific competitive strategy.

Assessing team diversity

Another insightful way to assess team performance is to ask what percentage of a team’s victories (or PCS points) come from either a single rider or a small handful of key riders. One representation of the percentage of victories attributable to a single rider is shown in chart 8 for 2021, with teams ranked from left to right in terms of total victories. First, note DQS on the far left. As we’ve already seen, its number of total wins far outstrips all the other teams, yet its reliance on a single rider is the lowest in the peloton – its top rider accounted for just 15 percent of total wins.

Conversely, on the right-hand side of the chart, note the last six or seven teams – all of which have been able to generate only a handful of victories, but have a much higher dependence upon a single rider. DQS is clearly the most “diversified” team, with many riders who can churn out the victories, while many lower-ranking teams are heavily dependent on a single rider.

Other teams rating higher on this basis are Astana, where top rider Aleksandr Vlasov accounted for 15 percent of total victories, and Trek-Segafredo, where Mads Pedersen had 16 percent of total team wins. Interestingly, this metric is highly variable year to year and is dependent on the team’s total number of wins. A case in point here is Movistar: in 2021, Alejandro Valverde accounted for just 20 percent of the team’s 15 wins, while in 2020, the entire team marked just two WorldTour victories, both taken by Marc Soler (for a 100 percent “dependency” rate).

It is also clear that different teams take very different approaches toward “diversity.” For example, Jumbo-Visma ranks second in terms of 2021 wins. However, in contrast to DQS, the Dutch team relied on Wout Van Aert and Primož Roglič for 60 percent of its wins, 30 percent each, or exactly twice the inferred dependency rate of DQS. (Indeed, Roglič accounted for 60 percent of the team’s wins by himself in 2020.) The same strategy is currently employed by UAE, which relied upon Pogačar for more than 40 percent of its total wins in 2021. (Changing the units from wins to PCS points generally results in similar conclusions: Pogačar was, unsurprisingly, the team leader for UAE in terms of both wins and points, in both 2020 and 2021.)

Looking right across the chart, Groupama-FDJ ranked seventh in terms of total victories in 2021, with more than 40 percent of them coming from their star sprinter Arnaud Démare. With roughly the same number of total team wins in 2020, leveraging on his outstanding performance at the Giro, Démare accounted for 70 percent of the team’s wins that year.

Plumbing deeper in the victory rankings, teams like Cofidis, Lotto-Soudal, DSM, and NextHash-Qhubeka (previously Dimension Data) have frequently relied on a single rider for more than half of their total wins. To some extent, this observation may be at least partially due to budget constraints—they simply can’t afford more than one top rider, and the evidence makes it clear that reliance on a single rider is a risky strategy.

Past team drop-offs, following an injury or transfer of star riders, are numerous. For example, Mark Cavendish accounted for 31 percent of Dimension Data’s first WorldTour season victories in 2016, and Edvald Boasson Hagen accounted for 40 percent the following year. The departure and/or decline of these key riders was devastating for the team. Or look at Lotto-Soudal, which finished the 2019 season ranked ninth in terms of total wins but relied on Caleb Ewan for 44 percent of them. With Ewan suffering from crashes and injuries over the past two seasons, Lotto hasn’t been able to replace those wins and has seen its overall team fortunes fall as a result.

Perhaps the clearest examples of this potential risk today are UAE and Groupama-FDJ.  One hates to imagine what might happen to either team’s future should Pogačar or Démare sustain a career-ending injury. UAE seems to be working to address this over-reliance and backing up Pogačar by recently hiring Valerio Conte, Alexander Kristoff, Matteo Trentin and Marc Hirschi. Groupama-FDJ, on the other hand, seems to be forging ahead with the single-rider-reliance strategy.

These data suggest that there is a strong correlation between a team’s win share coming from a single rider and its general level of success and future prospects. This is just as true in cycling as it is in business and other endeavors in life—diversity leads to success, as roughly shown in chart 9. Qualitatively, if a team’s win share for a single rider is above 35 to 40 percent, a warning light should be coming on, and if it reaches or surpasses 50 percent, alarm bells should be ringing. Rising win share by a single rider is a worrisome sign of an undiversified team, one that could at any moment experience a steep decline. While it must be fabulous for a team to sign a star rider like Pogačar, management must also be constantly worried about what would happen to the fortunes of the whole team should they lose Pogačar.

But, once again, a rule is defined by its exceptions. A consistently strong diversity factor isn’t the only factor driving great competitive success, as shown in chart 10, which illustrates the relationship between diversity and overall success. The examples in the top-right corner, DQS, and Ineos, have both had good success with well-diversified teams. Bora-Hansgrohe also had a fairly low percentage of wins coming from its top rider (Pascal Ackermann with 20 percent) while coming in an impressive fourth place with 21 total victories. This means it’s a deep squad and has a strong position going into 2022 with its addition of a healthy Sam Bennett from DQS, who will most likely rack up more wins than both outgoing stars, Peter Sagan and Ackermann, did in 2021.

In the top left of the matrix, UAE and Groupama have both had reasonably good success, at least so far, with relatively undiversified teams. Meanwhile, in the bottom left box are relatively hapless teams that are neither very well-diversified nor very successful: the NextHash and Cofidis teams in 2021.

Perhaps most interestingly, in the bottom-right box, are examples of teams that are reasonably well-diversified but still operate in the middle or lower tiers of the peloton. EF hasn’t had a single rider claim more than 33 percent of its annual victories since 2015—a testament to the diversity of talent the team has been able to assemble as well as its ability to consistently pull off a handful of surprising victories every year. Nonetheless, as already discussed, the team typically ranks in the mid-to-lower ranks in terms of overall performance, averaging around 10 to 15 wins a year. Astana shows similar characteristics.

It would appear from the chart 10 matrix that being more diverse doesn’t necessarily mean that a team is going to be more successful and healthier from an absolute perspective; rather, it may just mean that the team will be consistent at whatever level it tends to operate in. It may also simply imply that the team doesn’t have the resources to employ or develop many riders who can consistently win races. The flip side of being too dependent on an individual rider seems to be that all teams need at least a couple of strong performers, or they simply aren’t going to win many races.

The lower half of this matrix tends to represent teams that presumably have smaller budgets. They may have a big win now and then, and they may be consistent, but their chance of moving into the top half of the chart is limited by sponsorship dollars. Teams move to the right in this chart by diversifying within given budget constraints. Teams move upward in this chart by increasing budgets. Teams sliding down in this chart have probably lost a key sponsor, and teams sliding to the left may need better talent management. Teams tend to move around in this hypothetical matrix from year to year, and hence—as we’ve seen repeatedly above—we see the high amplitude in terms of performance.

Summary and takeaways

The most notable findings in this analysis are the consistent year-to-year variability observed in almost all these metrics. What emerges is a picture of a sport in constant competitive flux—in fact, a sport defined by its very name, “cycling.” It seems surprising that over this entire 10-year period, while many teams have had a good year or two, DQS is the only team that has generated consistent performance. INEOS, at least until recently, has dominated the sport’s biggest event, while teams like UAE and Jumbo-Visma may be working on it, but so far no one else has mastered the art of building a consistently successful team.

An immediate second conclusion is that being cyclical is not necessarily a disadvantage. Competitive unpredictability is perhaps one aspect of the sport’s fan appeal. Regardless of the media hype, we really don’t know how good a team is going to be two years from now. For example, there was much gnashing of teeth in the cycling media a few years ago when the conventional wisdom was that INEOS had developed the sport’s clearly dominant team. Many observers predicted a dulling of interest in the sport due to the British team’s metronomic dominance of the Tour. Upon further reflection, however, while INEOS did assemble a very talented team, it was only “dominant” in one domain: the grand tours.

The importance of money to winning in pro cycling remains an open debate. Unfortunately, any serious analysis of this topic is severely hampered by the fact that accurate budget data is simply not available for most teams. (Note: The UCI has indicated to The Outer Line that there is on-going discussion about making more team budget information available . ) Related to the level of sponsorship is the degree of sponsorship certainty —i.e., regardless of absolute size, is next year’s budget assured or is the team distracted with trying to find a new sponsor and guarantee its employees a job for the following year? Some teams have put together longer-term and more stable arrangements with their sponsors, while others seem to be constantly changing; and, as shown here, that doesn’t necessarily correlate positively or negatively with overall competitive success.

As we saw, both Movistar and Lotto-Soudal have had consistent and dependable team sponsorship throughout this time, but both have experienced declining competitive performance. And while the INEOS team’s presumed WorldTour-leading budget did buy it a number of Tour wins, it didn’t buy many total wins nor a particularly high WorldTour ranking. In fact, it would appear that the team’s wins and top 10s have decreased as its budget has increased, while DQS continued to dominate all three categories with (according to limited public information) presumably a smaller payroll. We may be entering a new era with the seemingly bottomless reservoir of funding for the new state-backed teams, but it’s too early to draw conclusions there.

While collapsing performance can lead to sponsor withdrawal, sponsor uncertainty or regular rider turnover doesn’t necessarily lead to poor performance. Teams like EF have generated consistent performance over the years, despite working under different sponsorship arrangements and coming close to extinction a couple of times. Even DQS, the sport’s most successful team, has seemed to struggle to find consistent financial backing beyond its Quick-Step backbone, but it hasn’t suffered performance drop-offs. In fact, one could argue that constant innovation and cost-cutting with its roster has become a competitive advantage.

From a broader perspective, we can hypothesize that cycling’s inherent performance variability (whether a result of sponsorship and financial uncertainty or not ) can act in a similar way that salary caps or promotion/relegation schemes work in larger franchise sports (ensuring a longer-term competitive balance of power between the teams). However, there appears to be a limit to this variability and performance equality. As our data show, even a massive-budgeted team like INEOS has had down years, but so far it appears that a solid level of spending ensures that a team stays in the top half, while squads without the luxury of a big budget are forced to fight it out in the relegation zone. Indeed, if some of the lower-ranked teams are not able to generate a higher volume of UCI points during the 2022 season, they are faced with the very real possibility of effective relegation at the end of the year. This “race within a race” and the various unintended consequences it will cause will be the focus of much media attention during 2022.

Another clear conclusion is the adage of not putting all your eggs in one basket. Once again, DQS stands alone in terms of demonstrating the value of diversity, of having the ability to field a stable of riders that’s always in the mix for victory. Other teams, including Jumbo-Visma, INEOS, and Bora-Hansgrohe, have built strong organizations and deep rosters of talented riders without necessarily focusing on a single star. (In contrast, teams like DSM identify and sign lesser-known riders who are patiently developed into bigger stars.) Developing diversity and spreading around the talent allows teams to flourish even if one or two of their top riders hit a rough patch or decide to move on. Other teams, like EF, have built reputations as consistent workhorses—being good for a predictable number of wins each season, even while not performing at the peloton’s very highest level.

Building a successful cycling team is a multi-faceted challenge, but this analysis illuminates three key and intertwining drivers for sustained success: (1) money, the purely quantitative size of the team’s budget; (2) the related and less quantifiable but critical significance of the “quality” of the team’s riders, whether through luck or good planning; and (3) the qualitative and managerial aspects of running a team, including team philosophy, access to talent, development programs, operating structure, management style, and esprit de corps . How these three attributes interact and overlap and are employed by individual teams separates the winners from the losers—along with the teams that are improving versus those that are declining.

After aggregating, parsing, and distilling these metrics, it should be remembered that winning is not everything. The focus of many pro cycling teams is not just to win races; an equally important objective is to successfully promote the visibility and causes of sponsors. Perhaps the most instructive example here is the EF team. In terms of raw numbers, EF has generated a middle-of-the-road performance, operating on a low budget through most of the past decade. However, it has been able to drive a massive amount of fan interest by allocating its resources to maximize results at the biggest races and by developing an alternative program of races. On the flip side, DQS, the dominant WorldTour team organization by nearly every metric we’ve accessed for this 10-year view, has yet to win a grand tour — though under Lefevere’s previous squad, Mapei, Tony Rominger won the Vuelta a España and Giro d’Italia in the mid-1990s. For the grand tours, it has been overshadowed by the likes of INEOS, Jumbo-Visma, and UAE—all of which fail to match DQS in terms of total results—and it has gone through several different co-sponsors.

At the end of the day, how should cycling teams best measure their success? This is a topic for another time, but viewed from this broader perspective we could reasonably ask: Which team has been more successful over the past 10 years? EF or DQS?

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World Tour 2022 team ratings: How did each men's team fair this season?

Counting down the diamonds and the duds of the 2022 road season

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AG2R CITROEN: 3/10

Despite stringing together a series of high finishes in the early season stage races, last year’s breakout star Ben O’Connor failed to mount a Grand Tour GC bid to match his fourth-place from last year’s Tour de France. 

Instead, a Bob Jungels stage win at that race was their season highlight, while what little success they had elsewhere in the World Tour often came from Benoît Cosnfroy, who won GP de Québec and podiumed at Amstel Gold and Brabantse Pijl.  

ASTANA QAZAQSTAN: 1/10

With fewer wins than any other World Tour team, and only two of those managed outside of Asia, Astana’s miserable downward trajectory of recent years continues. 

Fourth overall at the Vuelta and Giro Miguel Ángel López and Vincenzo Nibali respectively were their only real performances of note, and with the latter retiring, they can only hope newly-crowned under-23 world champion Yevgeniy Fedorov helps spark life into this struggling team. 

BAHRAIN-VICTORIOUS: 7/10

At the start of the season, Bahrain-Victorious picked up where they left off from 2021, winning another monument though Matej Mohoric at Milan-San Remo, picking up another Grand Tour podium finish with Mikel Landa at the Giro, and many other big wins including Dylan Teuns at Flèche Wallonne. 

Things did tail off during the second half of the year results wise but Fred Wright's continued grit and determination in the face of a string of near misses served to endear the team to the fans and make him one of the squads best best performers.

BIKEEXCHANGE-JAYCO: 7/10

Despite having the threat of World Tour relegation hanging over them for much of the season until Michael Matthews landed them a haul of points with bronze at the World Championships, BikeExchange-Jayco enjoyed their most prolific season since 2019.

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New signing Dylan Groenewegen proved to be a success in the sprints and Simon Yates was his usual self, and each contributed to the team winning stages in all three Grand Tours, although illness prevented Yates from doing well on GC in any of them.  

BORA-HANSGROHE: 9/10

Jai Hindley’s overall victory at the Giro d’Italia (the team’s first ever Grand Tour) was perhaps the greatest ever achievement for the German squad, and a landmark moment confirming that they are now one of the top stage race forces.

They also again managed to exceed 30 wins despite the departure of long-standing talisman Peter Sagan, largely thanks to the prolificity of Aleksandr Vlasov and Sergio Higuita in stage races, who respectively won the Tour de Romandie and Volta a Catalunya.  

COFIDIS: 5/10

Nineteen wins is a significant improvement on recent years for Cofidis, even if the vast majority did come in small French races. This was their first third season competing at World Tour level, but they still struggle to make an impact in it, with Jesus Herrada’s stage at the Vuelta and Ion Izagirre’s at Itzulia Basque Country their own victories in top-ranked races.  

The constant struggle to develop new talent in time to replace their trademark steady stream of riders heading for the exit continued to hinder DSM, who managed just ten wins.

This year’s top new discovery Thymen Arensman won a stage and finished sixth at the Vuelta España, having earlier made the podium at the Tour of Poland and Tour of the Alps, but he’s already moving on to Ineos Grenadiers; aside from his results, a Giro stage win for Alberto Dainese and Romain Bardet’s sixth overall at the Tour de France were the modest season highlights.  

EF EDUCATION-EASYPOST: 2/10

Managing less than ten wins this was the American team’s most disappointing season for a while. Of those wins, Magnus Cort’s at the Tour and Rigoberto Uran’s at the Vuelta were the highlights, but they also failed to feature prominently in the Grand Tour GC battles, with Uran and Carthy’s ninth-places at the Vuelta and Giro respectively the highest.  

Their bonkers Tour de France kit did some heavily lifting on the entertainment front though. 

GROUPAMA-FDJ: 6/10

Falling short of 20 wins for the first time since 2015, Groupama-FDJ weren’t quite as prolific as normal, though that total did include three stage wins at the Giro d’Italia by a resurgent Arnaud Demare.

Only fine margins prevented them from celebrating a stellar season, with Stefan Küng taking silver at the Worlds time trial and third at Paris-Roubaix, Valentin Madouas third at the Tour of Flanders, and David Gaudu finishing one spot short of a Tour de France podium.

INEOS GRENADIERS: 5/10

Despite the best efforts of Geraint Thomas (third at the Tour de France) and Richard Carapaz (second at the Giro d’Italia), Ineos Grenadiers failed to win a Grand Tour for the first time since 2014.

Despite that the wins kept coming (only three teams managed more, in fact), with Dylan van Baarle’s at Paris-Roubaix and Tom Pidcock on Alpe d'Huez the highlights, but even titles like Itzulia Basque Country (Dani Martínez), the Tour de Suisse (Thomas) and Amstel Gold (Michał Kwiatkowski) aren’t enough for a team with as high expectations as Ineos.  

The recent shuffling on the staff side of the team would seem to indicate not everyone is happy inside either.

INTERMARCHE-WANTY-GOBERT MATERIAUX: 8/10

Surely the most improved team of the year, the Belgian squad’s sophomore season in the World Tour saw them fully adapt to the elite level. They have a real star in Biniam Girmay, whose Gent Wevelgem win and Giro stage were their season highlights, but there were contributions throughout the team, from veteran Alexander Kristoff’s steady stream of wins and Quinten Herman’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège’s runner-up finish to Jan Hirt and Louis Meintjes’ Grand Tour top seven finishes.  

ISRAEL-PREMIER TECH: 2/10

Victims of the dreaded relegation under the new UCI system, Israel-Premier Tech suffered as age caught up to veterans Jakob Fuglsang, Michael Woods and Chris Froome. With new signing Giacomo Nizzolo also falling short of his normal sprinting form, even an excellent Tour de France (where Simon Clarke and Hugo Houle each landed surprise stage wins) was not enough to save them.  

JUMBO-VISMA: 10/10

The image of Christophe Laporte, Primož Roglič and Wout van Aert crossing the line together at the opening stage of Paris-Nice epitomised the dominance Jumbo-Visma enjoyed in 2022.

Those three riders were responsible for many of the team’s near-half century of victories, a haul that eclipses even last year’s tally of 43; and, most importantly of all, included the one they’ve wanted for years but that has always eluded them — the yellow jersey at the Tour de France, courtesy of Jonas Vingegaard.  

LOTTO-SOUDAL: 3/10

Hampered by Caleb Ewan’s crashes and injury problems, Lotto-Soudal were up against the threat of World Tour relegation all year. And despite the best efforts of young sprinter Araud De Lie, who was prolific in the minor classics, a lack of strength in depth and inability to get results in the big races saw them fail to avoid that fate.  

MOVISTAR: 4/10

A total of 18 wins was the team’s highest since 2019, but were confined mostly to small races; in fact, Carlos Verona’s stage win at Critérium du Dauphiné was the only one at World Tour level. There were several notable near misses though, with Enric Mas taking laudable runner-up finishes at both the Vuelta a España and Il Lombardia, and the retiring Alejandro Valverde podiuming at Strade Bianche and Flèche Wallonne as a reminder of how much the team will miss him.  

QUICKSTEP-ALHAVINYL: 9/10

Even if they weren’t quite as prolific as in recent seasons, the success of Fabio Jakobsen and Remco Evenepoel was still enough for Quick Step to once again finish the season with more wins than any other team. Evenepoel was the star, landing the team the World Championships road race, Liège–Bastogne–Liège and, most impressively of all, the Vuelta a España — the team’s first ever Grand Tour title, and the heralding of a new era. 

TREK-SEGAFREDO: 6/10

Trek-Segafredo are indebted to Mads Pedersen for his contribution this year, with his stage wins at the Vuelta a España, Tour de France and Paris-Nice, plus his strong showings during the spring classics, the highlights of their season. There was little to shout about from the other riders, but the Giro d’Italia was a success thanks to Giulio Ciconne’s stage win and Juan Pedro López’s run in the pink jersey.  

UAE TEAM EMIRATES: 9/10

Any team blessed with Tadej Pogačar isn’t going to be left wanting for success, and this year the Slovenian delivered Il Lombardia, Strade Bianche and Tirreno-Adriatico among many more victories.

It wasn’t just about Pogačar, though, and the team provided ample support for their superstar, while also enjoying success in his absence, with Alessandro Covi winning a stage at the Giro and both Marc Soler and Juan Sebastian Molano at the Vuelta, where Juan Ayuso also announced himself as another youthful prodigy with third overall.  

BEST OF THE REST

Once again, Alpecin-Deceuninck were by far the standouts of the non-World Tour teams. Only five teams managed more than their total of 30, a list that included multiple stage wins at each of the Grand Tours, and a monument courtesy of Mathieu van der Poel at the Tour of Flanders.

Despite the controversy surrounding Nairo Quintana’s positive tramadol test, it was also a successful season for Arkéa–Samsic , who are now poised to enter the World Tour thanks partly to the Colombian’s successes, and the smart way they targeted UCI points throughout the season.  

Norwegian team Uno-X were a breath of fresh air and some bright young talents in Tobias Johannessen and Rasmus Tiller, while TotalEnergies managed to win 15 races despite star man Peter Sagan seeming to be past his best.

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Stephen Puddicombe is a freelance journalist for Cycling Weekly , who regularly contributes to our World Tour racing coverage with race reports, news stories, interviews and features. Outside of cycling, he also enjoys writing about film and TV - but you won't find much of that content embedded into his CW articles. 

Wearing a cycling helmet whilst riding provides some protection in the event of an accident, but should we go further and consider a full-face helmet instead?

By Tim Russon Published 27 September 24

It's Friday, it's all happening – it's tweets of the week!

By James Shrubsall Published 27 September 24

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WorldTour 2020-22 Team Points Ranking – Updated Daily

On this page, you will find the WorldTour 2020-22 ranking of teams’ UCI points, which is updated daily by Raúl Banqueri . The brilliant feature art will be continually updated and is produced by Louemans .

Please bookmark this page if you find it useful and need to refer to it often. An overview of the promotion and relegation system of cycling can be found in this article .

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Triennium Ranking

The following graph represents the points earned by the top 22 teams in the world in the current WorldTeam licensing cycle, from 2020 to 2022. The 18 teams with the most points at the end of the 2022 season will earn WorldTeam licences for the next cycle, from 2023 to 2025.

2023 Wildcard Ranking

The relegated teams will have the opportunity to obtain one of the two automatic invitations to the 2023 WorldTour races. These invitations are awarded on the basis of the 2022 annual ranking and are competed for by the ProTeams against the relegated WorldTour teams. The following daily updated graph shows the status of this battle, adding also the points of the teams at risk of relegation.

Useful Resources

To give you an idea of the size of the differences in UCI points, we also show you the UCI points scale in the table below. We recommend you to download it in high resolution from here .

We also share the UCI calendar for the second half of the season. You can download it in high resolution from here .

Every two weeks, we analyse the performance of the teams involved in the WorldTour relegation battle in an extensive article. Below, you can find all our latest work:

• The Final Relegation Battle 2022 Analysis
• Lotto Soudal Gives Up and will be Relegated with Israel-Premier Tech
• Israel – Premier Tech is Virtually Relegated whilst the World Championships Save EF & BikeExchange
• Teams Lobby the UCI, Mas Liberates Movistar & Israel – Premier Tech Struggle Again
• Nairo Quintana’s Disqualification Raises Huge Questions as Arkéa Lose Points
• Israel-Premier Tech Open their Wallet after BikeExchange Take Off
• DSM and Arkéa Escape Danger while Movistar Descends into Trouble
• Lotto Draws Level with BikeExchange whilst Israel Surge
• Lotto’s Bull Charges to Safety as Mas’ crashes Scare an Angry Movistar
• EF Education Flounder as Lotto Approach Salvation
• Lotto starts its comeback and BikeExchange prays for Yates
• Lotto’s Desperation Intensifies as Valverde Carries Movistar
• Movistar Fall after Mas’ Crash as Cofidis Surge Clear of Israel
• Girmay Saves Intermarché, Cofidis Rise to Safety & Israel Plummet
• Yates’ Magic Boosts BikeExchange whilst Israel Slide to Danger
• Arkéa Reign Supreme with DSM in Freefall
• The Fight for Survival

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2022 Season Review: Breaking Down the UCI Team Rankings

Season Breakdown: The 2022 road season is in the bag and so Spencer Martin has taken a close look at the team performances. What does the UCI Team point rankings tell about which outfits over, and under, achieved during the 2022 season?

– This article is an excerpt from the Beyond the Peloton newsletter. Sign up here for full access. –

With the recent running of Il Lombardia marking the end of the 2022 WorldTour racing calendar, I’ve been taking some time to reflect on the trends we saw emerge in the past season and plan out the BTP off-season content. To kick off this reflection and re-examination, I wanted to step back and take stock of how each team stacked up in terms of the UCI point rankings.

Below are the top 23 teams (18 1st division + 4 PT) in order of the UCI points they gained from their top 10 point-scoring riders throughout the 2022 season (aka the UCI point rankings).

As we can see, Jumbo-Visma takes the top spot in the UCI rankings for the second time in three seasons, with former powerhouse, Quick-Step, falling all the way down to 6th place. And perhaps even more surprising, Jumbo-Visma also ranks as the top team in wins (tied with UAE), while Quick-Step fails to win the season-long ‘win title’ for the first time in over ten years.

And below we can see how my pre-season BTP NET projection model stacked up against the post-season UCI Team Point Rankings.

2022 Team BTP NET Projections Compared to Their Final UCI Point WorldTour Ranking Positions: 1) Team Jumbo-Visma (1) 2) UAE Team Emirates (2) 3) INEOS Grenadiers (3) 4) Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl (6) 5) Bahrain – Victorious (8) 6) BORA – hansgrohe (4) 7) Trek – Segafredo (11) 8) EF Education – EasyPost (15) 9) Groupama – FDJ (7) 10) Cofidis, Solutions Crédits (9) 11) Movistar Team (10) 12) AG2R Citroën Team (13) 13) Israel – Premier Tech (16) 14) Team BikeExchange (14) 15) Intermarché Wanty Gobert (5) 16) Astana Qazaqstan (18) 17) Lotto Soudal (12) 18) Team DSM (17)

I will dive into team performance in further detail when I do my weighted BTP NET Rankings for the coming season, but below are a few quick takeaways from these initial results.

Initial Takeaways:

1) Jumbo-Visma is officially cycling’s new superteam

• After a multi-year turnaround project, the Dutch team is now home to some of the sport’s best riders (Wout van Aert, Primoz Roglic and Jonas Vingegaard) and will exit the 2022 season with a Tour de France overall title along with the most UCI points and wins.
• This is one of the most difficult achievements in the sport since the single-minded focus on winning an overall title at the grand tour usually means a team can’t compile enough wins and UCI points to lead the WorldTour.
• They will now head into the 2023 season as the undisputed best team in the sport and will have massive expectations on their shoulders at nearly every race where they take the start line.

2) Quick-Step fails to take the ‘win title’ for the first time since 2012

• Up until 2022, the Belgian team eschewed stage race results in order to rack up wins in one-day races and individual stages.
• While 2022 was disappointing in the respect that the team failed to take the win title for the first time since 2012 and produced their worst results in the cobbled classics since the founding of the team in 2003, it was a massive success in they won their first-ever grand tour (Vuelta a España) and unearthed the sport’s next big grand tour star in Remco Evenepoel.
• Assuming the team can hang onto Evenepoel beyond 2022 (he is being pursued by bigger-budgeted teams like Ineos), it will be interesting to see how the team sets its financial and sporting priorities going forward.
• Interestingly, while their 4th place finish in the UCI Points rankings is technically disappointing, it is the first time their pre-season BTP NET rankings have roughly aligned with their actual finish, which reflects that their past results have been more a result of the team’s structure producing an overachieving squad than pure talent.

3) UAE failed to defend its Tour de France, and struggled to look like a cohesive team at times, but produced their best season ever

• Tadej Pogačar’s UAE team failed to win the Tour de France for the first time since 2020, but their 2021 off-season spending spree appeared to pay off as they tied for first in the win title and were the only team within 2,000 points of Jumbo-Visma in the UCI points race.
• This shows us that while they appeared to struggle to select the right Tour de France lineup to support Pogačar and to race as a cohesive unit in the races where their superstar wasn’t present, they will head into the off-season viewing 2022 as a successful campaign and that they could potentially emerge as the sport’s most dominant team in future years if they can find the right racing formula to unlock the immense amount of individual talent on the team.

4) The French teams had a surprisingly strong year

• After years of struggling to maintain pace with their competition in the world of hyper-advanced training, French teams produced a strong 2022, landing five teams in the top 20 and staving off relegation, which allowed them to keep four teams in the 18-team WorldTour.

5) Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert punched well above its weight

• If Alpecin was the underfunded overachiever of the 2021 season, Intermarché, who finished second-to-last in the 2021 WorldTour rankings, is the darling of 2022.
• With an extremely thoughtful team-building and in-race strategy, the underdog Belgian team was able to turn an 18th-place finish in 2021 into a shockingly high 5th-place finish in 2022.
• Most impressive is the gap between their BTP NET projection of 15th and 5th place finish, which shows that they really maximized the talent in their team.

6) DSM, EF, and Astana are in desperate need of a turnaround in 2023

• While Intermarché was flying high, three better-funded WorldTour rivals (DSM, EF, and Astana) suffered through absolutely awful seasons where points, wins, podiums and top tens were extremely hard to come by.
• While Astana and DSM struggled mainly due to weak rosters, EF’s extremely large delta between their BTP NET projected finish (8th), and their actual finish (18th), shows that their problems were more execution than talent related. I expect the American team’s off-season will include a significant amount of performance fact-finding to figure out how this could have happened.
• Putting just how poor the seasons of this trio were into perspective, while DSM only trailed AG2R by a single win, they finished over 2,000 UCI points behind the French team, which had a fairly disappointing season itself.

Next week I will be breaking down the top 20 in the UCI point rider rankings before getting into the usual BTP off-season content of digging deeper into team results and trends from the 2022 seasons in more depth, restarting the Weekly Transfer Analysis, and attempting to project 2023 performances with my BTP NET series after the rosters are set in January. An important note is that if you want access to all of these posts, you have to be a paying BTP subscriber .

# Spencer Martin is the author of the cycling-analysis newsletter Beyond the Peloton that breaks down the nuances of each race and answers big picture questions surrounding team and rider performance. Sign up now to get full access to all the available content and race breakdowns. #

Spencer Martin authors the cycling-analysis newsletter Beyond the Peloton that breaks down the nuances of each race and attempts to bring a logic-based approach to cycling coverage. He is also a partner in cycling business publication The Outer Line, and in the past, has written for cycling outlets such as Velonews and CyclingTips. He has raced at a high-level in the past and still enjoys participating in a wide variety of races as well as riding in the mountains surrounding his residence in Boulder, Colorado. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @spencersoward.

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UCI Points and Rankings Tables Explainer

Tim Merlier wins his first Giro stage and weeks later he’d take a Tour stage as well. As well as satisfaction, media coverage and big lines on his palmarès , these wins brought him the sum of 220 UCI points… but in winning the Koksijde Classic and Elfstedenronde he got 325 points.

With 2022 shaping up to be a season where points matter for some, here are all the points tables for the season ahead on one handy page.

First, the table below is for the World Tour races, if it’s a stage race then it’s for the final GC.

Next comes the points per stage the World Tour and as you can see, there are not less on offer each day, it’s all about the overall, which explains the point about Tim Merlier at the top.

Now you can see points on offer for final place in the secondary competitions of the grand tour, the mountains and points competition:

Next comes a daily award for leading a World Tour stage race, a nice bonus but surely worth more in media attention than points.

Now comes arguably the most important table here because it lists the points on offer in a range of races outside the World Tour. Riders and teams who struggle to win big can find opportunities and points galore in the table below. Winning a stage race overall or winning a one day brings the same points haul, which makes one day races very important. The season-opening Challenge Majorca races are a good case study, they are each Class 1 races and so win one and a rider banks 125 points, but if it was a stage race only the final overall would bring this many points.

Next two tables below shows the points on offer for stages in non-World Tour races and the daily points for leading the race too.

Next comes the national championships, split into A and B groups, where A is defined as a nation that started at least one rider in the previous Men’s Elite world championship road race. These points matter because often when we look at the teams with few wins and placings in the year, several of their best results can be from national championships in smaller nations, the kind with only a few pros. Sometimes we’ve seen big name riders skip their national championships but smaller teams hunting points ought be paying business class return for their lesser riders to go and grab the jersey and points.

Now comes the Continental Championships, think the European championships for the best example. Other regions are supposed to have them but they can be thin on the ground. 2022 has Asia, Oceania and Europe in the calendar for now. If these championships have a team time trial and/or a mixed relay time trial event, the small table below also applies.

Now for the Worlds and Olympics, obviously big events but the UCI is keen to big them up even more with the points on offer. 200 points for the U23 race can help explain why some teams are happy to see their riders drop down to the U23 ranks for a day as they can hoover up points.

For the last of the tables, here’s the mixed relay race at the worlds which the UCI is keen on promoting and it’s worth a lot… in points terms anyway.

How to forfeit points As well as winning points by results, riders can lose them. The UCI rules include various penalties for bad behaviour, including points deductions. They concern cheating like taking short-cut, to using sidewalks, ignoring level-crossing red lights, littering and other misdemeanours, right down to failing to sign on for the day’s racing or show up for the post-race press conference if invited. Any team manager worried about scoring points should remind riders of all of these.

Rankings and points don’t matter! That’s what every team manager says outwardly… but oddly have the points for a seventh in a 2.Pro stage race at the fingertips, or can recall the precise tally each of their leading riders scored last year.

But if rankings did matter then they’d be easy to understand and readily available. One reason for this blog post is so I can have all this season’s points tables on one ready page rather than having to the UCI website, scroll for the regulations page, look up the rulebooks, download Chapter 2 on road races, open the PDF and scroll past 76 pages of text to get the tables. As ever the allocation of these points often tells us more about the committee awarding them than the races themselves.

Team rankings explainer You take the ten best scorers of UCI points this season on the team, add up the total and this gives you the team’s score, then they are ranked in order. This allows a team to rely on a few riders for points while letting others work as domestiques to help deliver the results and points needed.

Operation Salvage If teams wants to stay in or join the World Tour, where can they find the easy points. Obviously winning the Tour de France helps but realistically that’s probably something reserved for the handful of teams who are big enough not to worry about the drop zone.

A win in a one day race is often as valuable as the GC in a short stage race, and given most one day races often end in a sprint then having a strong house sprinter helps a lot. Aim for smaller races where the big name sprinters can’t be bothered and where many World Tour teams won’t even start and there’s points galore. This part explains why Alpecin-Fenix sit so high in the rankings, a win in the Elfenstedronde, Paris-Chauny or the GP Monséré brings 125 points… more than the 120 points for a Tour de France stage.

Things to look for in 2022

• To undermining the whole post above, please enjoy the season’s sport and drama rather than worrying too much about points, it’s only a background story among many
• Still there’s the relegation and promotion drama this year, as explained in the 2022 Points Race
• There’s also the contest among the second-tier UCI ProTeams to finish as high as they can because if the World Tour has 18 or 17 teams next season then the best ranked Pro Teams get automatic invites, if there are only 16 in the World Tour in 2016 then the best three teams get picked by default

45 thoughts on “UCI Points and Rankings Tables Explainer”

As Inrng points (sorry) out: “the allocation of these points often tells us more about the committee awarding them than the races themselves” – but what does this tell us about the committee/UCI? Is this an insidious attempt to devalue the Tour relative to other races, a way to prod more WT teams to go to the ‘minor’ races, a misunderstanding of the value of a GT stage win, or was the committee just bored and rattled this off with no real thought?

I suppose the rankings are there to establish a coherent identity for the World Tour races, to give them all some kind of shared status. But also for me it still shows the rankings don’t matter that much, teams don’t really care about being 1st, 5th, 14th etc (the top team will enjoy it of course)… but this year it’s a back story given the promotion/relegation issue so it does matter for a handful of teams.

That’s right on – it’s a ranking designed to be used for team selection purposes.

The public already know the rankings that really matter: the best stage race rider in the world is the one pulling on a yellow shirt in front of the Arc d’Triomphe, the best one day rider is the one wearing the rainbow jersey, the best rider on awkward surfaces is the one covered in mud holding a cobble, the best sprinter of the year is the one who wins the most GT stages etc…

I quite much agree with the very first point you make.

And about the rest, well, of course in a very broad sense you’re right, and I’d pretty much support the underlying point about race primacy over ranking in cycling – yet, it doesn’t really work like that as often as we’d like to imagine.

I’d say that the best “stage racer” (which, by the way, isn’t exactly “GT rider”) was neither Geraint Thomas in 2018, nor Egan Bernal in 2019. Or, to say the least, it would be quite much a debate. Nibali wasn’t the best stage racer in 2014 – that was clearly Contador.

And stage racing is a relatively easy call when compared to one-day racing, given that the Worlds doesn’t mirror that at all, not to speak of Paris-Roubaix, whose winner very often isn’t even the best rider on the cobbles on a given season. I won’t bother with examples given that they’re actually more common than the other way around.

An interesting thing in cycling is that the value of an event (a race) often comes from the “semantic intersection” between the race and other narratives, quite often the winner’s palmarés being the simplest form of the latter. Valverde winning the Worlds was bigger than, dunno, Rui Costa or Hushovd doing the same (no offence intended). Same with Nibali at Sanremo. It also works with races you’re left lacking of: Boonen with a Sanremo, Bettini or Valverde with a Ronde etc. Competition is so obvious a factor I won’t delve into it now.

And a lot of races which the casual fan doesn’t even take into account are what becomes very meaningful to understand who really was the dominant rider in a “specific feature” of the cycling season: if you reduce cobbles to Ronde and Roubaix, you’ll fail to understand who performed against or over expectations, and hence how you should judge his or her general performance. It’s interesting that this last element rarely stands the passing of time, but it’s key to feel the show while it’s ongoing.

Riders can get points for non pro races. Ie. Country and worked championships. A bit strange if those points go towards team points. But i guess its to reduce the chances that team managers forbid it. Like how the Australian soccer team can’t always get the European stars to play. You could get the situation where helping a country team mate gets his trade team the point required for his team to relegate your own team though. Unlikely but possible.

One of the odd stories later this year will be when trying to work out the moments that got a team promoted/relegated. Now if there’s 5,000 points of the course of a season for a team, there’s no one moment but imagine a team relegated by 10 points, it could still be portrayed as “Rider X dropped some litter and it cost him 15 points” etc.

It may already have happened, with DSM’s Chris Hamilton finishing outside the points at the Aussie RR

One understands the UCI’s desire to globalise cycling but to see Montréal and Québec in the same points ranking as Roubaix and Flandres and two categories above Strade Bianche is ridiculous. Similarly to see Santos above Catalunya and Itzulia is simply not justified either by the challenge of the parcours or quality of the field. As for Guangxi in the same group as Het Nieuwsblad!

Not many would disagree…. but if the points mattered a lot they wouldn’t be tucked away on the regulatory section of the UCI website and hidden inside a 300 page PDF document. That said given the relegation issue this year, more teams and some fans will be looking them up.

The counter balance to that, though, is that it’s usually the same faces / teams that win the top races so the effect on the relegation ‘battle’ is negligible. Now, offering grande points for Quebec or such, that could be vital. As readers are fond of pointing out, the big races stand by themselves and have their own narrative; the lesser races, much less so. Introducing points awards to them could enhance that narrative, especially as the season draws to a conclusion and the ‘league table’ becomes clearer. @Larry, did that Spirit of Cycling As May Be warn you of all this, league tables and transfer fees? 🤣

@Larry, did that Spirit of Cycling As May Be warn you of all this, league tables and transfer fees? 🤣 I’ve complained about this enough, that’s why it was just +1 for DJW’s comment rather than going into it again. I take small comfort in that it seems I’m not the only one who thinks things are f__ked up with changes almost for change’ sake rather than actually improving anything. But in a world where they say the 2021 F1 season was fantastic (I’d say only in a WWE sense) and they had more viewers than ever it’s clear the marketing-mavens and money-men have no interest in what I think – they’ve got fatter wallets to plunder.

To be fair, all sporting competitions’ official scoring systems are tucked away in their regulations. I make it 7 clicks from the FIA home page to the 98 page pdf containing the F1 scoring tables.

But agree that if the UCI and teams wanted to make more of the WT, they would be drawing more attention to it. Even if only referring to the max points with the name of the race, like tennis does – eg the Gent-Wevelgem 500, or Strade Bianchi 300.

Actually , the really stupid regulation about these rankings is this one:

2.10.043 The UCI has created various rankings that can be used to qualify teams in an event or a series. These rankings may also be used as a sporting criterion as part of the registration process of teams with the UCI. The UCI is the exclusive owner of these rankings. These rankings for internal use only *may not be published*.

So the most important rankings of the year for teams whose sponsors want to know whether they’ll be in the Tour … can’t be published by the UCI!

Are you serious about the only the points from the best ten riders (overall) count?! Because that just sounds incredibly lazy and, I guess, would mean that a single standout result for a lesser rider, or say a second rate TT specialist, would mean absolutely nothing (to anyone but the rider and his friends) and consequently there’s really no impetus for anyone in the team to help him improve results.

Surely a better system would be along the lines of the team competition in stage races, where the team’s best results in each race, no matter who did it, counts.

And if you restricted it to the team’s single best result in the stage/race, it would incentivise teams to go all in for a big result without their domestiques having to leave something in the tank to fight for a minor placing.

The sole exception should be if a team manages to get multiple riders on the podium. The prime example is when Mark Renshaw did such a great lead out for Mark Cavendish to take the 2009 Sprinters’ World Championship (aka Tour de France stage 21) that he finished second himself. Columbia-HTC would have deserved to take the points for both positions that day.

Yes, it’s the top-10. But there’s a lot of value still in being an excellent lead out rider or breakaway chaser, setting up your leader helps. Plus a standout result from time to time is just good for everyone on the team. At the risk of repeating things, the points story this season is worth following but it only applies to a few teams and it’s very much a background story, especially in the first half of the season… although for every team manager saying “we just want wins, the points will follow” you can bet they have a spreadsheet on the go.

What we’ve seen, with Inner Ring’s victory tables, is that Quick Step have been very good at vacuuming up many wins in lesser races – their squad strength is better than most and they can utterly dominate lesser races. Take some editions of Le Samyn for instance, where it’s been more like trade show for click-together flooring than a competition 😀 Perhaps what the points classification could do, is encourage some teams / riders to think more creatively about their season’s targets?

Some may find it untraditional but I kind of like the idea of an individual season-long competition like there is in mountain biking, F1 or skiing. If this ‘world cup’ competition was backed up with a jersey and hefty monetary prize it might create more race-within-a-race aspects. It would be even better if the points were divided over the races a bit more along the line of how the races are regarded in general. Just as a thought experiment, if some millionaire decided that they wanted to be involved in cycling but not own a team, could they make up their own ranking (or e.g. team up with ProCyclingStats) and hand out prizes for the rider scoring highest in their ranking? Or would the UCI be able to forbid that?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Prestige_Pernod 😉

So that was stopped just about when I started to watch cycling at the age of 10 🙂 . The Dutch version of the wiki mentions this prize was held in high regard by many, more so than the world championship. I can’t find that back in other languages and I haven’t heard many stories from old men that start with ‘do you remember back in the day when Mercx and Ocana were fighting for the Super Prestige…’ Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing something like that return.

I definitely remember Sean Kelly saying somewhere that he valued the Super Prestige, precisely because it offered a significant cash prize. Maybe it was in his autobiography Hunger?

Anyone else old enough to remember https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/fabulous-world-cycling/ ? Can’t count the number of times I read and reread these as well as using them for research purposes. I was really sad when they stopped publishing these in English. The editors made a pretty big deal out of Super Prestige back then. Sad to read Super Prestige was killed by French law against promoting alcohol via sports. Worse, now they can’t even celebrate a win with Champagne in the country of it’s origin!?!?!? WTF??

Yes, the Super Prestige was quite much appreciated (I think that even nowadays some granfondo series are still named after it as a nod of sort), as it was the Desgrange-Colombo challenge which preceded it. The funny thing with the latter is that it more or less stopped working when it became important enough to make some riders actually go for it – for the challenge, I mean – rather than simply trying to do their best also when they were racing away from their home country. It became apparent that the two things weren’t exactly the same… which is what tends to happen with most ranking systems as time goes by.

I’m a big fan of the PCS points rankings, both because it is much more reasonable than the UCI points system, and because it’s so transparent. My sense is that even though the year-end PCS rankings don’t come with a jersey or an official title, it’s looked at with respect by both riders, journalists, and knowledgable fans.

I agree with the PCS ranking seeming more just but if you look at the individual rankings for UCI and PCS points they are very very similar. Top 4 is identical, and only one name different in the top 10. So apparently it doesn’t make much difference.

It’s natural that the very top riders will score similarly under the two systems, but where you can see a substantial difference is outside the top 2-4 riders. Some years the top ten riders are substantially different outside the very top riders. In 2021, was Philipsen 7th, or 15th? Cavendish 22nd or 32nd? Sagan 34th or 57th? The PCS points system does indeed seem more just, in the sense of fitting better with the difficulty of what is accomplished.

Fortunately, most riders aren’t focused on the UCI points total. Imagine if there was a high-value year-end jersey based on the UCI points, and some quality riders started trying to harvest points more than build their palmares in a traditional way? It would be very ugly.

Quick add – I like the point that DaveRides and gabriele made, that the UCI points is not really at all about ranking riders. That does seem the primary purpose of the PCS points system, though, imperfect as it is and must be (because of the crazy, complex nature of competitive road cycling). The PCS points seem as decent a stab at a rider ranking system as I’ve seen.

gabriele: +1

blimey – this is complicated and I’m a fan of the sport. No idea how you go about explaining this to someone new to following it. Strikes me as cycling turning into Harry Potter – 10 points to Gryffindor 🙂 I think I’ll do what I always do and watch the races that I enjoy then later in the season I’ll let Inrng explain the nuances of tactics around the points and the implications for promotion / relegation

The problem with a ranking system is obviously what do you want to measure and why (or what for).

To start with, a measuring system can be used to know more about a reality of sort *or* as a policy to push things in a given direction you see as fitting. Normally, in most fields really, where I wrote “or” you’d better write: “and”, “as well as” or perhaps use the Latin word “vel” (a kind of “and/or”). Maybe you’re trying to sell an ongoing pattern as a well-established reality, or you’re trying to call “a natural fact” what’s quite more dynamic, or you’re trying to materialise a self-fulfilling prophecy. And if you’re aware of what you’re doing (big if) that’s not as bad as it may sound; I’d even say it’s pretty much ok most of the times, especially but not exclusively if you are a decision-maker or in a managing position rather than a descriptive scholar (the latter being open to debate, too).

This double nature is evident in the UCI ranking system above, where you aren’t just trying to understand where any sort of sporting value actually lies: they’re also fostering some specific races, although their sporting value is quite much relative (how do you know that? Well, for example you could check the typical all-around career-long results of the winners, or the long-term quality of the top-10s).

Besides, what are you actually interested in? Commercial value? Technical value? They’re quite different. What the fans regard as good? Which fans? In what country? That varies *a lot* even within so-called historical countries, which of course aren’t entitled themselve to any sort of last word. For example, any TdF stage’s got a way greater commercial value than, say, Harelbeke, but the sporting value of the latter is normally superior. How do you tackle that? And among GT stages of any single GT, the situation is hugely heterogeneous, and sometimes sporting value depends mainly on racing circumstances, that is, it can’t really can be judged beforehand. Of course, we’re going to approximate… but the difference is such that it comes close to making no sense at all. Merckx’s and Cavendish’s “stage wins record” have little in common, as Cipollini’s and Binda’s… or Petacchi’s score and Coppi’s.

Commercial value and sporting value (we might even add “recognition among fans” as a separate factor) aren’t just different, they can often be conflicting. And the institutional ranking system, unlike a private one like PCS’s, mustn’t come too much at odds… with either. To put it simply, if you sacrifice commercial value, sponsors won’t understand why the famous guy who won the much watched race falls that down (or relatively so) in the ranks, while if you sacrifice sporting value you’ll fail in retaining talent and effective team models when producing great racing is concerned (the old Euskaltel team’s case we’ve been speaking about here is an excellent example of the latter!).

Finally, who the ranking is aimed at as a “reader”? I suspect that the above isn’t really for the general public, come on, that’s why it doesn’t go with a jersey and so. It’s about the teams. It’s an attempt to restrict access to the WT in order to make it desirable while not losing too much sporting value along the way, plus going on with some historical policies about global race promotion.

Relegation and promotion of teams, as important as it may be in so many sports, isn’t really a thing in cycling – for now I mean – essentially because fans usually aren’t (or “weren’t”) that much committed to any team, didn’t really root for a team, rather for the athletes. Which, on turn, depended on the majority of teams lasting a couple of decades at the very most. Ouroboros, of course, but that’s what we have got, although there are clear attempts to shift away from that model. However, UCI isn’t trying to sell us any new model, for now: the three-year interval makes sense if the main reasons are those which I expressed above, not if you want to create any sort of competitive narrative for fans.

And, of course, huge interest has always been placed much more in the races, each seen as a specific value (the debates about the race courses, a narrative in themselves…).

To start with, because winning has always been sooo difficult in cycling, let alone repeat multiple victories. That was a part of the model of the sport.

Yet, it’s quite evident that several of these aspects have been changing in the last couple of decades or so, for a range of different reasons, among others hyper-specialisation, for instance. When trying to attract new fans who were used to different sport models, it was quite much natural for sponsors and institutions to try and offer recognizable patterns. Same with team fandom. Higher investment sort of requires to build on identity and fanbase, something which used to happen also in the past, of course, but in a more random way.

Migration to a different model can be debated about as more or less fitting, risky or whatever. Most of the times it will happen – or not – regardless what stakeholders (old and new fans included) think on the matter. That can be hugely good news, as it’s the case for women cycling’s recent well-deserved growth (or comeback), despite most big stakeholders being quite wary (euphemism) about it.

What’s surely good is to think about the specific positive aspects you want to keep alive through any sort of migration you’re going through, which otherwise might go unnoticed until it’s too late, and also check expectations against the material conditions of the specific sport you’re speaking about. Some of cycling’s strong points are different from F1’s or football’s (most of the times the cycling world itself being pretty much unaware of it), and the other way around, of course.

Lastly, and quite much generally speaking (not thinking of any commenter here, rather a widespread attitude in forums and so), what I find a bit naïf is a dismissive or ironic way of criticising this point system without seriously wondering what is it about.

A lot of good points here. I wonder WHY there needs to be some sort of ranking system other than if someone like Pernod wanted to hand out an award and use that interest to sell a consumer product? Unlike most of the sports who have one, cycling doesn’t have contests on the same/similar court, field or course every time. One of the great things IMHO is that there’s something for everyone, whether a sprinter, climber, rouleur, etc. Any ranking system ends up trying to make every contest more similar rather than the reverse and too often skips the fact that it’s not Team X vs Team Y but Team X vs all the other teams at each race, teams made up of racers whose talents may or may not match up perfectly with the course chosen by the organizers. Trying to make pro cycling appeal to fans of F1 or FIFA football is a dead-end, risking alienating the current fans while not gaining any new ones. Unless the goal is to put more money out there for various people to hoover up, I don’t understand the goals of ranking systems, relegations, WT, etc.

Yowzers – Cyclingnews just put up a paywall! I guess you won’t be able to access their live updates to the races either any longer.

Cyclingnews and Cycling Tips both built paywalls this year – I’d love to run the numbers to see what is more profitable, paywall or advertising based on free access.

I’d love to know that, too. I’m also wondering if there will be fewer ads if you subscribe to Cyclingnews (there have been so many recently that it had become hard to read), or if they’re going to try to have both income streams. I expect they can’t charge advertisers as much when their readership is likely to dramatically plummet, though.

It feels like we’re in an odd place as cycling fans. There are more races broadcast widely than ever, likewise tons more happening in women’s cycling, and yet most mainstream sports news sites barely touch the sport at all, and the specialty sites are moving to subscription models. There was a time when as a fan I could read much more about cycling than I could watch actual races, and now the situation seems to be reversed.

Ironically, this site is probably the only one I’d pay to read, and it’s free. Which reminds me to repeat, thank you Inring for the time and effort you put into this.

“Ironically, this site is probably the only one I’d pay to read, and it’s free.” Finally something we both can agree on! 🙂 I recently posted something on this subject here: http://cycleitalia.blogspot.com/2022/01/velonews-is-dead.html

Not only that, but the only site where a phrase like “Ouroboros, of course” in the comments comes as no surprise.

Ah Larry I’ll check out your post, thank you for the link.

Totally agree, this is the only blog where the writing quality is high enough to pay for.

I understand that cycling journalism is a tough financial model. However, even with GCN+, I doubt the numbers are in favour of paywalls in the long term.

Unfortunately I will have to keep seeking out free race updates (I can’t justify the paywall for GCN+ or cyclingnews).

Sadly this was not always the case. While cycling scribes were never likely to get rich, it seemed at least they used to be able to eat. But at some point the stuff in English was being written far too often by people who you wondered if they didn’t pay the mag/website to publish it or gave it away free just to see their name in print? Some of it gave me a headache just trying to read it! Was it Truman Capote who famously said: “This isn’t writing at all. It’s typing”? Some of the video dialogue spewed by these people is not much better IMHO. If the behind-the-paywall folks bring back quality writing (I think of guys like Herbie Sykes when it comes to English) I might pay, but so far I’ve not seen anything online I’m willing to hand over money for…far too many of these people come across as online panhandlers rather than journalists.

I can still get CN. And I’d never pay for it.

CN doesn’t ask for payment if you use incognito mode on your browser. Just saying…. 😉 😉

Why not just award the points to teams and not to riders? Riders have different tasks as part of the team, which often are not to do with them winning. Sure, there would still be specialist websites that would dig into the points tally piled up by each rider, but ours is a team sport.

-May be a bit ironic here, but it’s worth remembering that this points system was not intended to give riders a ranking or a value. It’s meant to be about ranking teams so the little quirks become less important when you think that all the WT has the same roster opportunities. It’s definitely not intended as a transfer value chart, which is something the UCI could maybe move against, although I’m sure the agents already discounted teams with alltop scorers (cf Olympic womens’ RR)

This is why I suggest that the team earn the points of the highest position on each race/stage, so the team’s other riders can focus on working for the leader without having to leave something in the tank to fight for a minor place at the finish.

Various forms of motorsport have worked on similar lines to this over time, often in sports car or rallying championships where a manufacturer can only earn points for their first two cars rather than every car of that make in the field.

The sole exception should be when a team dominates so completely that they get both the win and place another rider (or even two others) on the podium. In those cases they deserve the points for the other podium position/s as well as the winner.

I think the use of the individual points as a transfer value chart has already been partially neutralised, by the UCI moving away from transferring of points with riders to calculating the qualification ranking exclusively on a team’s previous results under their own banner. Team managers are also smart enough to spot a MVP performance when they see one.

Regardless of any reforms to the calculation of team rankings, I believe the individual ranking will continue to exist. Any attempt by the UCI to get rid of it would just result in there being *more* interest in whichever unofficial ranking/s abound so they may as well keep it.

Exactly, the best teams don’t stress over the minor placings for UCI points. The team and riders are confident that their team-first approach will deliver the wins they need – which add the real value to the team.

But we might see lesser teams not riding to win in order to ensure a safe top 4 and the points accrued.

Comments are closed.

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Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel set to finally ignite epic cycling rivalry in World Championships road race

Perhaps the strangest part of Sunday’s World Championships showdown between Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel is that we don’t quite know what to expect. Somehow, two of the greatest road racers of their generation have conspired to miss each other’s careers almost entirely. There is no hinterland of tactical ploys to fall back on, no highlights reel of sprints to the line. Pogacar and Evenepoel are racing on a blank sheet of paper.

They have ridden different grand tours and picked different Monument classics. When they were finally set to face off, at Liege-Bastogne-Liege last year, Pogacar crashed out as Evenepoel raced away to defend his title. They missed one another at the Olympics Games when Pogacar opted out, partly to preserve energy after an epic year and partly over a dispute with the Slovenian cycling federation after they overlooked his girlfriend Urska Zigart. Even this summer’s Tour de France – their first grand tour together – rarely threw up a head to head, mainly due to Pogacar’s dominance .

Pogacar is certainly the favourite to win his first world title and round off a spectacular year after his historic double of victories at the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France. This hilly 270km route from the city of Winterthur to the centre of Zurich, where seven laps of an undulating city circuit await, is the most strenuous parcours since Innsbruck in 2018, and it suits Pogacar to perfection. Plus: he’s Pogacar, a seemingly unbreakable force in the form of his life.

“I want to take the World Championship jersey,” he said, after winning the Tour de France. “It has looked very good on [reigning world champion] Mathieu van der Poel. I want one time to have the rainbow jersey on my back.”

But if anyone can beat him, it’s Evenepoel. The 24-year-old Belgian won the world title in Wollongong in 2022, and he too is in irresistible form after winning double Olympic gold in Paris, which he backed up by defending his time trial world title in Switzerland last weekend, despite suffering a dropped chain on the start line.

“Tadej is the man to beat, but that’s why I’m here,” Evenepoel said this week.

One advantage Evenepoel holds over Pogacar is his nationality. Teammates could play a decisive part in the outcome, and the Belgian squad is stacked full of comfortable climbers in Tiesj Benoot, Jasper Stuyven, Laurens de Plus and Tim Wellens – a man who spent July sacrificing himself for Pogacar’s Tour victory with Team UAE Emirates. Evenepoel will have plenty of help on the ascents if he needs it.

By contrast, Pogacar’s strongest Slovenian teammates are Primoz Roglic, a five-time grand-tour winner in his own right who may not be desperate to sacrifice himself for Pogacar’s gain, and Matej Mohoric, who withdrew this week with injury. Pogacar doesn’t necessarily need a supporting cast, and it is questionable whether even the Belgians can disrupt his mission.

There are other contenders in the field. Defending champion Van der Poel is a threat in any one-day race, but the lumpy course plays against the Dutchman. France’s double world champion Julian Alaphilippe arrives in decent form searching for a third title. Britain carry a strong contingent led by Olympic mountain bike champion Tom Pidcock on a team that also features the Yates twins, Adam and Simon, and young Scottish rider Oscar Onley.

But it is hard to make a case for anyone beyond Pogacar and, maybe, Evenepoel. Pogacar would become only the third rider to win the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and World Championship road race in the same year, after Eddy Merckx and Stephen Roche. Evenepoel can achieve a remarkable set of doubles – Olympic and world champion in both road race and time trial in the same year, and the first rider to win both men’s elite races at the same World Championships.

History is at stake and, strangely, a cycling rivalry for the ages could finally spark to life.

Men’s World Championships map, profile

Vollering v kopecky.

The women’s race sees a rivalry renewed between two teammates at SD Worx-Protime: Demi Vollering will have the backing of a deep Dutch team in Zurich on Saturday, but Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky is the reigning world champion desperate to defend her crown, and with plenty of strength by her side too.

Vollering has endured a year of near misses, losing a dramatic Tour de France finale atop Alpe d’Huez to Poland’s Kasia Niewiadoma by just four seconds. She finished second at the recent Tour of Romandie, to Kopecky, and was runner-up again last weekend in the individual time trial.

She is, frankly, sick of coming second. “The fire is burning after the loss in the Tour de France,” Vollering told Dutch broadcaster NOS. “I’m looking for revenge and I’m very motivated for this World Championships.”

Kopecky has become a superstar in her homeland since becoming world champion last year in Glasgow, and where Evenepoel carries Belgian hope this weekend, Kopecky carries expectation. She landed a psychological blow with that victory in Romandie, but the climbing route should suit Vollering better. The 154km ride from Uster to Zurich includes 2,250m of elevation, dished out mainly via four circuits of the city before the finish line.

Among the rest of the field, the great Marianne Vos is a three-time world champion and always a contender, though the route may more enticing to riders such as new Tour queen Niewiadoma and Italy’s Elisas Longo Borghini. Yet even if road racing is an unpredictable business, it is hard to look beyond the Kopecky-Vollering rivalry.

“It’s not too bad to have a time trial before the road race, it’s good preparation,” said Vollering, who lives in Switzerland. “But it’s a road race, so you need a little bit more than only the good legs, for sure. You need a little bit of luck too. And you need to be smart in the head. There are so many factors you need to have to win. It’s not only the strongest who wins the road race.”

Start times, TV channel and live stream

The women’s elite road race begins at 11.45am BST on Saturday 28 September. The men’s race begins at 9.30am on Sunday.

Both races will be broadcast live on Eurosport 1 and are available to live stream on Discovery+. TV coverage begins shortly before the race start times.

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UCI Gravel World Series – WorldTour riders Cromwell and Govekar win Sea Otter Europe Girona

German champion Paul Voss outsprints Petr Vakoc to complete men's podium in hilly Spanish contest

Tiffany Cromwell (Canyon-SRAM) and Matevž Govekar (Bahrain-Victorious) won Sea Otter Europe Girona on Saturday, the Spanish race through the rugged terrain Les Gavarres Massif one of the final UCI Gravel World Series events of the season to provide qualification for the Gravel World Championships on October 5-6.

The 107.2km sent off the elite men and elite women with just a one-minute separation at the start, a tough 5.4km climb lining out the fields just a few kilometres north of the start, that first peak averaging 6.3% gradient. The hardest challenge of the day came at kilometre 46 with an 8km climb at 4.2% average, taking riders across the highest point on the route, 517m above the sea. 

For Cromwell, after making it through the first-half climbs, she used the rolling profile on the back half to work her way back toward a lead group. The Australian would catch German Valeria Kleiner and French gravel rider Axelle Dubau-Prévot and hold them off to win her second Gravel World Series race, last taking a solo victory at Swartberg 100 in South Africa in April. Rosa Klöser came in more than 4 minutes after Cromwell for fourth.

"The race was quite difficult. Obviously, with that climb at the start, it quickly separated the women's field. I didn't have the best start and then I just had to kind of reset myself and step by step put myself back in the race," Cromwell told race organisers at the finish. 

"Then finally I started to catch the other women who were first, second and third. I think I caught Axelle with around 10k to go. Then I was like 'how do I win the race'. I just had to go full and completely empty myself. Happy I could take the win."

The 24-year-old Slovenian men's winner had expected to help Matej Mohorič, like he did last fall when Mohorič won the UCI Gravel World Championships and Govekar finished as the next best-placed teammate in 15th. This time out, Mohorič pulled out of the race after crashing in a training ride on Friday on the Girona course.

Govekar then adjusted his game plan and had free rein to go for the victory. He came into the Girona gravel race with a stage win at the Tour of Britain and just had to adjust to the off-road positioning. Seven seconds after he crossed the line,  German champion Paul Voss outsprinted Czech Petr Vakoc for the final spots on the podium.

"We came here with the reigning gravel champion, Matej Mohorič; it was unfortunate he did not start today, but I was still super motivated. I knew I was in really good shape in the recent month. I was having a really fun day on the bike, really enjoying the course," Govekar said at the finish. 

Complete results from UCI Gravel World Series can be found here .

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Jackie has been involved in professional sports for more than 30 years in news reporting, sports marketing and public relations. She founded Peloton Sports in 1998, a sports marketing and public relations agency, which managed projects for Tour de Georgia, Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah and USA Cycling. She also founded Bike Alpharetta Inc, a Georgia non-profit to promote safe cycling. She is proud to have worked in professional baseball for six years - from selling advertising to pulling the tarp for several minor league teams. She has climbed l'Alpe d'Huez three times (not fast). Her favorite road and gravel rides are around horse farms in north Georgia (USA) and around lavender fields in Provence (France), and some mtb rides in Park City, Utah (USA).

UCI Road World Championships: Cat Ferguson captures second gold in junior women's road race

'we ended empty but it was enough to win' - australia and grace brown celebrate another time trial title, state of the nation - analysing belgium's all-star 2024 world championships team, most popular, latest on cyclingnews.

Ticking off 10,000km as Lachlan Morton’s lap of Australia hits the Nullarbor

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UCI Road and Para-cycling Road Worlds: Australian team victory means second gold for Brown

The team time trial mixed relay, the final time trial event of the 2024 UCI Road and Para-cycling Road World Championships, was dominated by Australia’s Michael Matthews, Ben O’Connor, Jay Vine, Grace Brown, Brodie Chapman and Ruby Roseman-Gannon on Wednesday. With a time of 1h12’52’’ to cover 53.7km around Zurich (Switzerland), they powered to the gold medal in the most thrilling fashion.

Marco Brenner, Miguel Heidemann, Maximilian Schachmann, Franziska Koch, Liane Lippert and Antonia Niedermaier took silver for Germany with a gap of 0.85 seconds. Italy completed the podium with Edoardo Affini, Mattia Cattaneo, Filippo Ganna, Elisa Longo Borghini, Soraya Paladin and Gaia Realini (+8’’).

Just +0.85s in it 🤯 A tense end to the Mixed Team Relay, with Australia crowned the new UCI World Champions 🌈 #Zurich2024 pic.twitter.com/o18JXYgmMn — UCI (@UCI_cycling) September 25, 2024

Each national team took on two laps (one for the three men, then one for the three women) on the 26.9km city circuit that will see the peloton battle for the rainbow jersey in the road races from Thursday until Sunday.

The Germans took the strongest start, but the Australians led the way after the first loop. Italians got in the mix and all three teams were within 5’’ after 38km… Brown and her teammates eventually sealed the deal with the closest margin, delivering a new UCI world title for Sunday’s women’s individual time trial (ITT) winner just before retiring.

“I think I’m feeling a little bit greedy, I need a few more rainbow jerseys in my closet,” Grace Brown said with a smile. She is the first rider to win both the ITT and the team time trial mixed relay in the same edition of the UCI Road Worlds. “This one is really nice, doing it with the whole Aussie crew,” she added.

“It was a hard one,” Michael Matthews said. “Jay [Vine] put me to the sword straight away: on that first climb, I think we averaged 650 watts from bottom to the top… There wasn’t much recovery so we just tried to stay together as much as possible as a team. We came through with the fastest time and then we knew we had a strong women’s team to finish it off.”

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World Championships 2024 Road Race preview: Triple crown for Tadej Pogacar or Remco Evenepoel at the double - again?

Published 27/09/2024 at 12:01 GMT

Tadej Pogacar, defending champion Mathieu van der Poel and the in-form Marc Hirschi will be among the favourites trying to deny another famous double for Remco Evenepoel in Sunday’s World Championships Road Race. With over 4,000m of climbing on the menu in the Alpine foothills of Switzerland, it promises to be one of the toughest races in recent memory to decide the outcome of the rainbow jersey.

Evenepoel wins time trial in Zurich

'No transfers' - Evenepoel pledges future to Soudal-Quickstep

9 hours ago

Mathieu Van Der Poel of The Netherlands celebrates at finish line as gold medal winner during the 96th UCI Cycling World Championships Glasgow 2023, Men Elite Road Race a 271.1km one day race from Edinburgh to Glasgow / #UCIWT / on August 06, 2023 in Glasgow, Scotland.

Image credit: Getty Images

UCI Cycling World Championships Glasgow 2023 – Men Elite Road Race final podium: Wout van Aert (silver), Mathieu van der Poel (gold), Tadej Pogacar (bronze)

Highlights: Matthews storms to third GP Quebec win as Pogacar fades

UCI Cycling World Championships Glasgow 2023 – Men Elite Road Race: Mathieu van der Poel's gold medal

Men’s Road Race route

UCI Cycling World Championships Zurich 2024 – Men Elite Road Race profile (La Flamme Rouge for ProCyclingStats)

Image credit: Eurosport

The weather forecast

Belgium's Remco Evenepoel and Slovenia's Tadej Pogacar during the 2024 Tour de France

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Pogacar has had world title ambitions 'for a long time' ahead of 2024 showdown.

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'I'm feeling a bit greedy' - Brown on leading Australia to more glory ahead of retirement

25/09/2024 at 17:26

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