It’s a quiet week before the weekend storm of cobbles starting with Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on Saturday. This micro break gives a moment to look at the team victory rankings and see who’s had a good start to the season.
If you think it’s too early to count, think again. We’ve had 70 days of racing this year and that’s one eighth of the way through the season.
There’s been something for everyone so far with sprints, climbs, time trials, summit finishes with the exception of cobbles that are coming this weekend. Some points to note:
- Some teams have plenty of wins but almost everyone else has got something too, even Ag2r La Mondiale who often had to wait months have got a win. The exit of Euskaltel-Euskadi and Vacansoleil-DCM also means two perennial Team Gooseberries have gone
- Astana is the sole team without a win. House sprinter Andrea Guardini could change things in the upcoming Tour de Langkawi
- So far Lotto-Belisol = André Greipel. The German has collected all of the team’s six wins but of course it takes a team to launch him to the win so his success is built on the sacrifice of others
- Greipel’s six wins means he leads the individual rankings too
- Michał Kwiatkowski has helped put OPQS in pole position with four wins this season, this time last year they were third with Mark Cavendish taking six of their eight wins
- Belkin have one win but this time last year, with the Blanco jersey, they had ten
As usual the warning that quantity and quality are different and often opposing values. There’s yet to be a race with big TV coverage offering publicity and prestige. But these early wins matter, they help team morale and stop the embattled feeling and pressure to win that teams with a blank record begin to feel as time goes on. Early season success doesn’t automatically segue into big wins in the spring classics, see OPQS last year who scored plenty of wins before March but “only” got one podium in the Monuments and Ardennes races thanks to Niki Terpstra’s third place in Paris-Roubaix.
The Tour Down Under has been the only World Tour race offering big ranking points. But note a rider and team’s Sporting Value are based on points won in all races all season long so riders and teams are fighting hard for these wins.
Finally the rankings for the second tier Pro Continental teams. Wanty-Gobert lead thanks to four wins in the Tropicale Amissa Bongo race in Gabon, a race that’s a useful boost for others with MTN-Qhubeka and Caja Rural each winning there too. As you can see the big World Tour teams have taken most the success and will continue to do so but we should expect to see the likes of NetApp-Endura and IAM Cycling win in the coming weeks and months.
Think the left side got cut off – no OPQS shown on the chart, IR.
Cheers.
Anyone else get the same? I can see it from here.
Fine for me.
Fine for me, too. Maybe it’s a specific browser thing?
I’m also seeing the left side cut off, but that is probably because we are still using IE8.
It is fine when I open the chart up full screen.
The formatting of the graphs also doesn’t work for me. I’m on IE8 due to work so that might be it.
left hand side cut off, but not a problem to open up full screen
Interesting to see so few wins on the Pro-Conti circuit.. the World Tour teams have sweeped up mostly everything this year. I wonder if this is a growing trend and a widening divide between the cream of the crop at the WT level vs. the rest? a la Premiership vs. Football League?
It’s true and last year we saw a similar thing, but also a split in the Pro Conti ranks with a first tier of teams like Europcar and IAM ahead of the lesser squads. With more racing ahead and often two or three races on the same day it’s likely the Pro Conti teams get their day when the bigger teams are away in the big spring classics etc too.
And also there will be more WT races in the coming months so WT teams will not need to go to smaller races in order to race…
chart looks OK for me
Europcar seems to be punching well with Volkler hurt.
Seems a bit pre-mature to be counting victories so early in the new season, but that’s the new reality of the World Tour’s global circuit. Still, we will know more about prospective form of teams and riders after P-N and T-A certainly.
+1 I HAVE thought again. And again. And it’s way-too-early to count. Now that the racing’s back in Europe I’m slowly awakening to the real start of the cycling season, Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico and hoping I can find some pirate video feeds for them.
you can always find feeds on cyclingfans.com or steephill.tv. For every race, all year.
Note steephill is not linking to the pirate feeds any more.
1) Pole position. Nice turn of phrase.
2) yes, left side of graph is chopped. Using 1st gen ipad, older safari browser.
A Good spread of wins, so far. Good to see.
Poor Astana…can’t see them getting anything in the Spring either.