2015 World Tour Rider Age and Nationality

Matteo Tosatto

There are 474 riders from 41 nations registered with the 17 UCI World Tour teams for 2015.

The average age of a rider is 28 years and 3 months. The oldest rider is the 40 year-old Matteo Tosatto (Tinkoff-Saxo) who is pictured above and just seven years younger than his boss Oleg Tinkov. Lampre-Merida’s Colombian neo-pro Eduardo Estrada is the youngest pro, aged 19.

Here’s a look at the 2015 World Tour 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 the total number of riders. 474 is down from 502 at this team last year, largely because of the Europcar team’s ejection from the World Tour. The French team still don’t have a Pro Continental licence either but hopefully this is fixed with the resumption of business after the Christmas holidays. But pro teams have got a tiny bit smaller, the mean average has fallen from above 28 to just below, and this in spite of Europcar leaving the selection as they had a relatively small squad.

Now onto age. As mentioned the mean average rider age for 2015 at the start of the season is 28.25 but there’s a wide difference.

World Tour team average age

Cannondale was the second youngest team last year and their youth has merged into the Cannondale-Garmin team who’s average drops further thanks to retirement of David Millar and the departure of riders like Fabian Wegman and Johan Vansummeren. Tinkoff-Saxo retain the title of pro cycling’s gerontocracy but have just one of the peloton’s top-10 old croans in Matteo Tossato although the oldest pro on the road. Trek Factory Racing are relatively rejuvenated by the departure of Jens Voigt and Danilo Hondo. Here are the oldest riders in the 2015 peloton:

Rider Team Date of Birth Age Today
Matteo Tosatto
 Tinkoff-Saxo
 14/05/1974 40
Pablo Lastras
 Movistar 20/01/1976 38
Greg Henderson
 Lotto-Soudal
 10/09/1976 38
Luca Paolini
 Katusha 17/01/1977 37
Cadel Evans
 BMC Racing
 14/02/1977 37
Xabier Zandio Team Sky
 17/03/1977 37
Haimar Zubeldia
 Trek Factory Racing
 1/04/1977 37
Angel Vicioso
 Katusha
 13/04/1977 37
Svein Tuft
 Orica-Greenedge
 9/05/1977 37
Jean-Christophe Péraud
 Ag2r La Mondiale
 22/05/1977 37

“If a 39 year old can win the Vuelta…“

In recent years the likes of Jens Voigt and Chris Horner seemed to give hope to masters-category riders around the world. Now there are fewer celebrated names among the top-10 elder statesmen especially as Cadel Evans is going to quit in the coming weeks. Tosatto and Lastras are two riders worth cheering for and Lastras is a cult rider for some, enduring and known for his generosity. But note the presence of Tuft, pink jersey wearer in the Giro and of course Péraud although at 37 he’s spritely compared to the now retired Voigt.

Last year a cluster of older riders affected the age distribution, the presence of Voigt, Horner and others meant the mean average was higher by six months than the median. For 2015 this gap is much closer. Here are the top-10 youngest riders in the World Tour:

Rider Team Date of Birth Age Today
Eduardo Estrada
 Lampre-Merida 25/1/1995 19
Matej Mohorič
 Garmin-Cannondale 19/10/1994 20
Lorrenzo Manzin
 FDJ
 24/7/1994 20
Caleb Ewan
 Orica-Greenedge 11/7/1994 20
Frederik Ludvigsson
 Giant-Alpecin 28/04/1994 20
Quentin Jauregui Ag2r La Mondiale
 22/04/1994 20
Tiesj Benoot
 Lotto-Soudal 11/03/1994 20
Miguel Lopez
 Astana
 04/02/1994 20
Sondre Enger Holst
 IAM Cycling
 17/12/1993 21
Rick Zabel
 BMC Racing 07/12/1993 21

Matej Mohorič was the youngest last year and now is still the second youngest pro, pipped by Eduardo Estrada who is just short of his 20th birthday and the only rider born in 1995 in the peloton.

Rider nationality
Now let’s look at where the riders come from. Here’s the breakdown by nationality for the 474 riders;

UCI World Tour

Outside of the top-25 we have Belarus with three, Ukraine, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estona, Croatia and China with two while there’s one rider from Taiwan, South Africa, Japan, Finland, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Brazil and Argentina.

Despite the ejection of Europcar from the World Tour France remains the top nation for pros in the World Tour, just ahead of Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. Domination for cycling’s traditional nations? Yes but look at the 28 riders from Australia. However if you think the Aussies are closing the gap, think twice as two years ago there were 35 Aussie pros in the World Tour.

  • Note the official source data from the UCI website are incomplete but as expected ProCyclingStats.com has the more up-to-date info.

30 thoughts on “2015 World Tour Rider Age and Nationality”

  3. Always interesting to have a look at the data on teams and ages, and an excuse to brush out some notes and remind myself of average, mean average and medians….

  4. I thought there was more than one South African in the Worldtour–who is it, van Rensberg? I guess the rest are on the Pro Conti team MTN Qhubeka.

  5. Just read in Cyclingnews that Ale-jet Petacchi has signed with former Yellofuo team. Does this make him the oldest rider in professional road cycling, or do Rebelline and Horner trump him?

    • It’d be Rebellin, 43 and a few months older than Horner. Rebellin’s in the Pro Conti CCC team so not on the list above while Horner’s one lower level down with Airgas-Safeway. Petacchi’s just turned 41.

    • Interesting, thanks. I looked and he’s not on the UCI website but many riders are missing from the UCI listings, eg there’s no Kolobnev from Katusha and Bradley Wiggins and Chris Sutton aren’t with Sky. But procyclingstats have him and there are reports of Estrada himself saying he’s signed with the team. Maybe they don’t race him much or place him with a smaller squad? He was racing briefly in France with the Ag2r feeder team Chambéry CCF.

      • I think its a question of which riders have signed contracts with the team for the following year at the time of the teams submitting their paperwork to the UCI for licences etc by end-Oct, isnt it? Those that didnt – and Wiggins was definitely one of them – at that point, dont show up on the UCI website – at least for a while.

  7. France remains just ahead of Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain.
    You missed Italy in the description.
    Other than that, great work, as always!
    Happy to see Luxembourg as such a small country up with 5 Pro in ProTour even if Andy Schleck retired. We must be the nation with the biggest ratio of ProTour riders/inhabitants 😉

    • did roughly calculate the ratio (using population info from Wikipedia)
      Luxemburg has 1 pro rider for every 110k inhabitants
      Belgium: 1/220k
      Slovenia: 1/295k
      Other countries with more than 1 pro / 1000k inhabitants are Netherlands (412), Swiss (432), Denmark (566), Estonia(658), New Zealand (759), Australia (846), Norway (859) and Latvia (995).

  10. Interesting reading, thanks INRNG! Just for my own sanity, I am presuming this second ‘Cannondale’ was was supposed to say Garmin? “Cannondale was the second youngest team last year and their youth has merged into the Cannondale-Team”

  17. Traditional cycling countries still dominate at the World Tour teams. I hoped that other countries would have pro cyclists. I wanted pro cyclists from different countries. Cycling teams must tolerate rosters from different countries and cultures. Let’s make road cycling multiethnic and multicultural. Diversity would become the key of road cycling development.

    • The peloton’s a very homogeneous group, it doesn’t reflect the society around it. France is different, there are black pros, Muslim pros etc but we don’t see this to the same extent with the other European nations for now.

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