2014 World Tour Rider Age and Nationality

Jens Voigt

There are 507 riders from 41 nations registered with the 18 UCI World Tour teams for 2014.

The average age of a rider is 28 years and 1 month. The oldest rider is the 42 year-old Jens Voigt (Radioshack) whilst Cannondale’s U-23 World Champion Matej Mohorič is the youngest pro aged 19 and a quarter.

Here’s a look at the 2014 peloton in numbers. There’s a look at rider age, the “oldest team” and also analysis of how many pros come from each country and more.

Let’s start with age. As mentioned the average rider age for 2014 at the start of the season is 28.1, slightly lower than last year. This could be because a few outliers have gone, think Chris Horner and Stuart O’Grady but looking at team rosters some squads have been trawling the U23 scene to fill their ranks. Here are the 18 teams as ranked by average age:


Tinkoff-Saxo assume the title of pro cycling’s gerontocracy and have three of the peloton’s top-10 old croans with Karsten Kroon (37), Nikki Sorensen (38) and Matteo Tosatto (39). Radioshack-Trek were the oldest last year but Trek Factory Racing are rejuvenated… by the retirement of Chris Horner and Andreas Klöden but they still retain the peloton’s oldest rider Jens Voigt. Meanwhile Argos-Shimano remain the young pups of the pro peloton.

Rider Team Date of Birth Age Today
Jens Voigt Trek Factory Racing
 17/09/1971 42.3
Alessandro Petacchi
 Omega Pharma-Quickstep 03/01/1974 40.0
Danilo Hondo
 Trek Factory Racing
 13/08/1973 39.9
Matteo Tosatto
 Tinkoff-Saxo 14/05/1974 39.6
Nicki Sørensen Tinkoff-Saxo 14/05/1975 38.6
Pablo Lastras Movistar 20/01/1976 37.9
Karsten Kroon Tinkoff-Saxo 26/01/1976 37.9
Gabriel Rasch Team Sky
 08/04/1976 37.7
Juan Manuel Garate
 Belkin 26/04/1976 37.7
Greg Henderson
 Lotto-Belisol 10/09/1976 37.3
 

There’s a cluster of older riders who affect the average age. The mean age for the World Tour is 28 years and one month but the median is 27 years and seven months.

Rider Team Date of Birth Age Today
Matej Mohorič Cannondale 19/10/1994 19.2
Rick Zabel
 BMC Racing 07/12/1993 20.1
Alberto Bettiol
 Cannondale
 29/10/1993 20.2
Niccolo Bonifazio Lampre-Merida 29/10/1993 20.2
Sebastian Henao
 Team Sky 05/08/1993 20.4
Danny Van Poppel Trek Factory Racing 26/07/1993 20.4
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier FDJ.fr 30/06/1993 20.5
Boris Vallée Lotto-Belisol
 03/06/1993 20.6
Valerio Conti
 Lampre-Merida 30/03/1993 20.8
Alexis Gougeard
 Ag2r La Mondiale 05/03/1993 20.8
 

Note Jens Voigt was ranked as the world’s top amateur and the Peace Race in 1994 before Matej Mohorič was even born.

Rider nationality
Now let’s look at where the riders come from. Here’s the breakdown by nationality for the 507 riders;

Outside of the top-20 we have Austria, Luxembourg and Slovakia with five riders, Belarus on four, Czech Republic, Ireland, Lithuania and Sweden each have three, China, Croatia, Japan, South Africa, Ukraine all have two and there’s one each for Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Eritrea, Estonia, Finland and Latvia. Last but not least, a novelty for 2014 with Malaysia’s Loh Sea Keong joining Argos-Shimano.

The big change for 2014 is the increase in Frenchmen. It’s arithmetic given Europcar ride into the World Tour and so bring a lot of extra French riders into the mix to overtake Italy. The flipside is the exit of Belgian and Dutch riders, down six and ten respectively with Vacansoleil-DCM going and the same but worse for Spain after Euskaltel hung up for good, down from 50 to 33 riders. Australia go from 35 to 30.

  • Age numbers used above are decimal and not duodecimal, eg 25.5 is 25 years and six months and not 25 years and five months.
  • Note the official source data from the UCI website are incomplete but luckily ProCyclingStats.com doesn’t miss a beat, although I’ve excluded riders who have yet to turn pro, for example Olivier Le Gac with FDJ or Caleb Ewan with Orica-Greenedge

29 thoughts on “2014 World Tour Rider Age and Nationality”

  1. pedant alert: Petacchi’s birthday, according to PCS.com, is 3 january – today! (not 23 oct 71).

    coincidental observation: Tossato and N Sorensen share the same birthday, a year apart, and the youngsters Bettiol and Bonifazio share the same birthday!

    • Fixed Petacchi’s DOB, thanks.

      As for sharing birthdays, 18 February 1985 saw Fabio Sabatini, Christian Salerno and Jos Van Emden born. 21 February 1985 is also a day for three riders, although with twins, the Velits brothers and Christian Meier.

    • Slovakia with five riders do well thanks to Sagan and Peter Velits too. Portugal have six but a World Champion.

      Harsh about the French. A big stage race seems too much to ask but there’s an outside chance for a monument with the likes of Démare, Bardet, Pinot, Vichot and even Voeckler.

        • How about us Irish? We’re not doing too bad… Here’s hoping Phil Deignan will come to the fore driving the Sky train up hills in the big tours.

      • Harsh about the French? Doesn’t it say more about the poor economic health of pro cycling than anything? The concentration of French (ASO taking the lead) money? More about the lack of non-French money interested in investing in top level pro cycling?

    • Norway isn’t doing too bad – EBH, Hushovd, Kristoff and Nordhaug as well as Rasch (retires after PR this season) and neopro Vegard Breen.

  10. Does it look like classics riders & domestiques can prolong their career longer than grand tour top 10 riders? Or have all the GT riders been removed from their profession for other reasons? I suspect competing for multiple grand tours has a more damaging effect than competing as a one day specialist, so they retire earlier for one of several reasons, worn out, have enough money to retire comfortably, or banned.

  12. Another pedant alert!
    I’m loving the use of the 2 decimal points for rider nationalities. I scrolled down in hope that you had allocated parts of riders to different countries! I was thinking of say Chris Froome: Britsh 50% / Kenya 50% or Bradley Wiggins: British 25%, Belgium 50%, Australia 25%.

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