Team Victory Rankings

We’re now approaching the halfway point of the season as measured by racing days with close to 300 days of racing done of the 606 on the calendar.

The last time the chart appeared Etixx-Quickstep were leading ahead of Team Sky and Movistar. Now they lead thanks to Mark Cavendish winning four stages in the Tour of California and another from Julian Alaphilippe but Katusha come charging up to second place thanks to Alexander Kristoff and his 16 wins, five of which came from Norway’s Tour des Fjords and the Tour of Norway. Ilnur Zakarin took the Giro stage to Imola while Marco Haller won the overall at the Tour des Fjords. Meanwhile Team Sky failed in their bid to win the Giro but left with two stage wins thanks to Elia Viviani and Vasil Kiryienka. Beñat Intxausti won a stage of the Giro and Alex Dowsett took the time trial stage of the Bayern Rundfahrt and the race overall too, a very valuable win for the team given their German bike sponsor.

Lotto-Soudal are the surprise package. There’s been talk of divorce between Jurgen Van den Broeck and team management after the rangy Belgian suffered in the Giro but elsewhere it’s been win after win. André Greipel had his Giro stage win overshadowed by Alberto Contador’s crash but the team’s best rider by wins is Kris Boeckmans with eight this season and he sits fourth on the list of pros with the most wins behind Kristoff, Cavendish and Porte. That’s him pictured above as he’s not a recognisable rider yet.

Tinkoff-Saxo have had a great month of May. Alberto Contador won the Giro of course but they’ve added to the count with Peter Sagan’s Tour of California win with two stages along the way and Jesper Hansen winning the Tour of Norway with one stage too. FDJ’s Arnaud Démare has started winning again and this helps their score.

Lotto-Jumbo are still on that one win from Moreno Hofland’s sprint in the Tour de Yorkshire. Talk of unblocking the counter has been just that, talk. But as ever wins matter a lot but how you go about them is another and Sep Vanmarke’s visible efforts in the spring classics and Steven Kruijwijk’s heroics in the Giro count for a lot, the Jumbo supermarkets could have posters of Kruijwijk with the slogan “fresh every day” as a marketing campaign. But it’s safe to assume the team would trade one of Kruijswijk’s breakaway efforts in the Giro for a stage win or the mountains jersey where Giovanni Visconti proved a star pupil in high altitude arithmetic.

CCC-Sprandi Polkowice were almost invisible in the Giro despite their orange kit but top the Pro Conti rankings thanks to three recent wins in their home Bałtyk-Karkonosze Tour. Rusvelo are the home specialists with eight wins in Russia and only one outside. MTN-Qhubeka are still struggling, they’re sprinter heavy but have few wins although Edvald Boasson Hagen looks to be coming back into form. Europcar are still searching for that replacement sponsor and that first World Tour win this year.

Cofidis probably have the best budget in the second division but they’re still struggling. Nacer Bouhanni keeps running close but not winning. See his three second places in the Bayern Rundfahrt, it would be encouraging given he’s still just 24 but he’s on a contract worth over a million euros and the team has been built around him so it’s all proving stressful. Sam Bennett is Bora-Argon 18’s winning machine with three of their four wins including two stages of the home race in Bavaria but their best win or at least the surprise was the team time trial in the Giro del Trentino where they beat Team Sky and Astana.

Wildcard woes: the Tour de France is one month away. Bora-Argon 18, Bretagne-Séché Environnement, Cofidis, MTN-Qhubeka and Europcar are the five wildcard teams. At the present rate if they’re struggling to pick off small wins here and there then delivering stage wins in the Tour is a big ask: Bouhanni and Coquard are getting better in the sprints but they’ve got to trounce Cavendish and Kristoff; Boasson Hagen was great on those punchy uphill finishes but he’s got Peter Sagan, John Degenkolb and others to worry about.

41 thoughts on “Team Victory Rankings”

  1. On ‘wildcard woes’, the only thing worse than being a wildcard team in the Tour de France is not being in the Tour de France 🙂

    • Very true, to ride is to exist for some, especially Bretagne-Séché who will be happy with getting in some breakaways and trying for a stage or a jersey in the first week. But success is proving hard so far this season.

    • Yeah, but in terms of getting their name in front of eyeballs they had an excellent Giro. Hesjedal was all over the coverage in the last week.

      • The *couple* worked fine in the Verbania stage (Villella + Hesjedal) 😀
        With Hesjedal and Formolo they received a very good share of attention.
        That apart, Cardoso had a decent Giro, too (kept himself to his standard in a difficult edition). You could maybe expect something more from Slagter, since so many stages looked like just perfect for him: anyway, he tried his luck once or twice. More or less the same for Marangoni, but he hadn’t as many suitable occasions (well, besides being less classy a rider): however, he nearly seized the most fitted one.
        Given how they started the season, I was even more worried!
        One would have hoped that Acevedo (he had good results in May and June last year) and Danielson could something more for Ryder, but it looks they weren’t that well.

        True disaster was their spring: bad luck, bad form… whatever, but the hilly classics and minor races were very disappointing in terms of results.
        Now Talansky and Navardauskas are expected to bring some good news in.
        (We also shouldn’t forget they’ve got a couple of sensitive situations to manage, Moser and Dombrowski).

    • I think that was the U-23 ZLM Tour rather than the Ster ZLM Tour so that might not count? They are Pro-Conti though so think that they – along with Team Roompot – are on zero wins.

      • Ah, my bad. Seems they are struggling this season after stepping up.

        Hope it comes good for them, quite fond of them as Russ Downing rides for them.

  6. in case anyone’s interested, below are the rankings according to world tour points (in which Lotto-Soudal look much worse and Tinkoff much better):

    1. ETIXX – QUICK STEP 861
    2. TEAM KATUSHA 844
    3. TEAM SKY 758
    4. MOVISTAR TEAM 743
    5. ASTANA PRO TEAM 553
    6. TINKOFF – SAXO 550
    7. BMC RACING TEAM 463
    8. ORICA GREENEDGE 394
    9. LAMPRE – MERIDA 354
    10. TEAM GIANT – ALPECIN 314
    11. LOTTO SOUDAL 260
    12. AG2R LA MONDIALE 245
    13. FDJ 179
    14. TREK FACTORY RACING 165
    15. TEAM LOTTONL-JUMBO 158
    16. TEAM CANNONDALE – GARMIN 135
    17. IAM CYCLING 99

    • Thanks for posting. I *think* the aim of this exercise is more to look at some form of ‘return on advertising spending’ from a results perspective. Sure, a stage in Bayern Rundfahrt isn’t anywhere near as important as a 7th in the Giro, but it certainly gets a nice big photo, podium girls, etc which spreading the sponsor’s brand.

      • You could say though that 7th in the Giro is still likely to attract more coverage (especially tv) than a win at Bayern Rundfahrt. There’s a huge amount of casual and semi-serious fans who’ll probably only follow the GTs and the Monuments.

        • But how many casual and semi-serious fans notice or care who came 7th, and consequently give the sponsors any business? I’d guess it’s fewer than the number of Bavarians who saw stage/overall podiums in their home race.

          • This is where audiences split and different sponsors want different things. Some cycling fans in the U.S. for example will have seen Hesjedal in the Giro and this is good for Cannondale and Garmin as the sponsors need to reach cycling fans. By contrast Kruijswijk and his Lotto and Jumbo sponsors want to reach a wider public and fewer casual viewers will have been following the Giro from the Netherlands. So each sponsor or team can have different target demographics and segments.

    • Thanks for adding this nuance Anonymous. If I were a big sponsor like Tinkoff, I’d rather take GC wins than accumulate many small victories.

  7. Reading this, it doesn’t surprise me that LottoNL/Jumbo – Belkin -Rabowhatever struggle for funding given how few wins their riders bring home. They are full of riders like Kruijswijk and Kelderman who enterprising bloggers and enthusiasts praise…. without them ever actually winning anything to deserve it.

    In sport, no one remembers the runners up, right?

      • I think how you become a runner-up can matter in cycling, with so many riders and teams in a race and so few winners the story of how you try to win can be valuable. Putting up a good fight counts, at least during the coverage of the race. Many were excited by Amador/Kruiswijk/Hesjedal in the Giro but it’s true this will probably be a distant memory in 2020.

        • Well, some runner-ups are remembered for eternity.
          Poulidor is the best example of this. He did win many races, too, but is remembered most for not winning the Tour!
          Other examples include René Vietto, Joop Zoetemelk, even Andy Schleck.

          But I don’t argue that Amador, Kruiswijk and Hesjedal are in the same league, at least not yet. Just my point that it’s not victories that are remembered. Most of the time, it’s the fight. Sometimes, it’s the victory. Sometimes, it’s the failure. That’s why cycling is such a rich sport.

        • I get what you mean, yet I remember quite well what Hesjedal and Rolland did during last Giro, and I hope I’ll do in some years time, too. It’s easier when it gets associated to some of the GC action, when you recall “what happened” in the Mortirolo, you can’t easily erase Kruijswijk from the picture, nor Hesjedal from Verbania and Cervinia.

          Well, I suppose it depends on your memory and involvement, but I quite remember a good number of contenders and their performance in, say Giro 2010 (five years ago): Evans in Montalcino, Vinokourov in Zeeland and in the TTT, Arroyo descending Mortirolo, Nibali on Monte Grappa… I remember pretty well Di Luca’s fight with Menchov in 2009, Sastre’s stage wins in two of the harder stages, Basso’s attack way from the line in the Appenino Romagnolo stage, Pellizotti towards the Blockhaus. Di Luca and Savoldelli in the Presolana stage in Giro 2008. Etc.

          The Tour is generally more boring in terms of how the race is developing, maybe one can’t remember many contenders because they just lost the wheels 3 kms from the finish line instead of 4 kms away and so, or they were able to lose 2′ instead of 4′ in some TT.

          All the same, I think (I hope) many remember something from the Tour 2010 (still keeping your 5 yrs. back mark): Schleck – as the runner-up 😉 – and the whole chaingate thing, Purito’s win in Mende with Contador, and Vinokourov’s anger since he hoped he was going to win it from the break (Vinokourov’s stage win the following day…), the polemics on the Spa stage (Chavanel won, as in some later mountain stage), the pavé stage; I think there was some relatively “aggressive” showing from Samuel Sánchez, too, he went out to grab some seconds moving on the front from the favourite’s group in a couple of stall situation.
          The Tour 2009 had its good couple of memorable situation, but it was mainly thanks to Contador and his internal fight with the team. Yet I remember Garate taking the win atop the Ventoux in one of the most *flat* Ventoux stage ever, Schleck and Contador strolling around, Alberto controlling and Andy nursing his bro. Haussler’s stage win was pretty impressive, I think, and I remember something from the younger Feillu, too, a good solo uphill attack.
          Nor I believe we’ll soon (…2016… next year?) forget Contador, Andy Schleck and Voeckler’s displays in the 2011 Tour, even if no one of them won.

          • For me, Schleck in 2011 sums up his career: probably lost the Tour through a lack of bravery – I spent most of that Tour shouting at him to attack. Everyone remembers the Galibier stage as if it was heroic: for me, the fact that this was virtually the only time he attacked Evans (he did nothing in the Pyrenees) was indicative of the man.

      • I’m with you here. You can’t have a victor without a loser or two. All the possibilities of how they lost fill out the more interesting story

    • You could add ten Dam and arguably Vanmarke to that list too. Riders who get a lot of praise, attention and cult status but rarely ever win anything. You could have counted Mollema last year too. They seem to have too many riders who can finish somewhere between 15th-5th in GC without winning a stage, and nobody apart from Vanmarke for the classics, and he always seems to find a way to lose. Maybe when Cavendish and Greipel fade from view Hofland will come good, but he’ll still have Kittel, Bouhanni and Modolo to beat.

  8. Am I overlooking Bardiani or are they missing from the Pro-Conti victory graph? I’m sure they have at least one win as Nicola Boem won a Giro stage.

  9. Degenkolb’s two monuments are covering for the fact that Giant-Alpecin are significantly down on where they were this time last year what with Kittel struggling with health and Mezgec struggling for wins.

    Meanwhile it would seem that the 2014 rumours of Team Sky’s demise are greatly exaggerated. Even Brailsford admitted it was more a fact of their luck having to run out sometime.

  11. I think that Lampre are worth a mention. They had a terrific Giro (their home race) and are sitting pretty high up the leaderboard with 14 wins. Pity Rui Costa isn’t giving them another ‘banker’ win by threepeating at the Tour de Suisse.

  12. IR — Sorry if you went over it before but: when you tally wins do you only count stage wins or do you also count an overall GC win as a point, or do jerseys not count?

    Have you considered making a point weighting system, or parsing points into separate totals, based on the prestige/classification of the race where the win occurred (another poster’s example of a Bayern Rundfahrt win vs a Giro stage)? It could be interesting to see if an apparent win-target strategy emerges (ie certain teams win lots of big or small races only).

    Another interesting break down would be type of stage/race won (sprint vs mountain vs I/TTT vs classic/one day) just to see where teams have strength. Probably obvious but, fun.

    Just trying to make your life more difficult ; )

    Regards,
    T

  13. Hi INRNG,

    When following the Tour a few years back, one of the guides listed team budget with the other stats. Is this still available and if so, is it accurate? It would be fascinating to see wins per investment for oh, so many reasons.

    Thanks!
    Ben

    • I’ve looked at this before and it’s hard to compile. Some teams keep it private and those that publish accounts still don’t make it easy as exhange rates vary and high spending in one year could in part be paying out win bonuses and buying two new team buses. They are varying things like payroll taxes so even if we had the wage bill of each team they still would not be comparable, for example when I looked at AG2R they spend €6m on wages but an additional €2m in payroll taxes, something, say, Sky doesn’t cover as much

      http://inrng.com/2014/09/ag2r-la-mondiales-team-finances/

  14. No surprise to see those 4 at the top – but what gets me is how average BMC are given the money they throw at their squad. They seem to be the embodiment of jack of all trades and master of none.

  15. Are Tinkoff Saxo about the best funded team out there ?
    No wonder Mr Tinkoff is not amused, just the 9 x wins.
    I presume that table is post-Giro too ?

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