FDJ’s low ranking is no surprise

“It is with surprise and incomprehension that we have learned the UCI’s decision not to grant a ProTour licence to the FDJ cycling team”

So says La Française des Jeux’s team manager, Marc Madiot according to cyclingnews.com. There’s been a change this year whereby teams part-qualify for a “Pro Team” licence based on ranking points and then other criteria come in to play, like financial security and ethical standards.

FDJ is France’s state lottery and so you’d have thought calculating the probability of future events would be bread and butter stuff for this outfit, especially since the arithmetic of adding up points scored by your riders is simple stuff. Alas.

Lovely guy… just not very good at arithmetic

So sadly there’s no surprise to FDJ’s ranking. Its top rider is Sandy Casar, in a modest 69th place. Next comes Yoann Offredo in 88th place. With Christophe Le Mével bound for Garmin-Cervélo, the only other existing rider in the top-200 is Yahueni Hutarovich in 115th place.

The team has made new signings with Pierrick Fédrigo, Dominique Rollin, Mickael Delage and Rémi Pauriol. But of these only Fédrigo has precious UCI points, and a surprisingly modest haul of only 20 points, putting him in a lowly 128th place.

So in summary we have a team for 2011 that only has four riders in the top-200. There should not be any surprise that the team lacks enough ranking points. Even the outgoing Milram has six riders in the top-200.