UCI Points And Rankings Tables

Do rankings and points matter in cycling? Demonstrably not as the points tables are hard to find, they’re 70 pages into a 394 page PDF linked to on the regulations page of the UCI website.

But they do matter for this year’s promotion and relegation race. So here are the tables showing how many UCI points are available in each road race. It’s not a gripping read but at least here they’re all on one page and upcoming pieces about points and rankings can link back to this resource.

The table below is for the men’s World Tour races, if it’s a stage race then it’s for the final overall classification. You can see the overall win in the Tour de France is the single biggest points haul in the sport. Note the subtle differences, the Tour Down Under is more valuable that winning Itzulia Basque Country… according to the rankings:

Next comes the points per stage in the World Tour stage races, as you can see a Tour de France stage is 210 points and points in the grand tours go down to 15th each day and 10th for the other stage races.

Next you can see points on offer for final place in the secondary competitions of a grand tour, namely the mountains and points competition, as you can see winning points or mountains jersey is worth as much as a stage win. And for others it’s worth finishing second or third in the competition just for the points.

Next comes a daily award for leading a World Tour stage race, the real prize is the publicity and opportunity but the points are here to signal it counts too and with the overall win and stage wins it helps compound things further:

Now comes arguably the most important table here for the promotion/relegation contest because it’s for races outside the World Tour and this is where teams hunting points can find rewards thanks to the breadth of the calendar. Managers of teams trying to avoid relegation know the table below by heart. Here winning a stage race overall or winning a one day brings the same points haul, which makes one day races very important. The season-opening Challenge Majorca races are a good case study, all Class 1 one day events where the winner banks 125 points each day, but if it was a stage race only the final overall would bring this many points:

The next two tables below shows the points on offer for stages in non-World Tour races and the daily points for leading the race too:

Below are the national championships, split into A and B groups, where A is defined as a nation that started at least one rider in the previous Men’s Elite world championship road race. These points matter because often when we look at the teams with few wins and placings in the year, several of their best results can be from national championships in smaller nations, the kind with only a few pros. Sometimes we’ve seen big name riders skip their national championships but smaller teams hunting points ought be paying business class returns for their riders to go and grab the jersey and points:

Now comes the Continental Championships, think the European championships for the best example. If these championships have a team time trial and/or a mixed relay time trial event, the small table further below also applies:

Now for the Worlds and Olympics, big events but the UCI is keen to big them up even more and they are the most lucrative one day races on the calendar in terms of points, 100 more than a Monument classic:

For the last of the tables, here’s the mixed relay time trial at the worlds which the UCI is keen on promoting, it’s 300 points but this is divided by the three men, so 100 points each (of course the women get 100 each too):

How to forfeit points
Riders can lose points too. The UCI rules include penalties for bad behaviour and some come with points deductions. They concern cheating like taking short-cuts, to using sidewalks, ignoring level-crossing red lights, littering and other misdemeanours, right down to failing to sign on for the day’s racing or show up for the post-race press conference if invited. Any team manager sweating about winning points needs to also encourage riders not to lose them. As you can see from the Vuelta bulletin above, Nairo Quintana dropping litter cost Movistar 25 points, these can quickly add up and negate results.

32 thoughts on “UCI Points And Rankings Tables”

  1. Imagine how annoyed you’d be as a team boss/rider/etc. if your team got relegated because the UCI gave more points to the TDU than to the Basque.
    Or because the next best team specifically targeted getting lots of riders into the top ten on stages of the Challenge Mallorca.
    How have they not changed the points allocations?
    Genuinely laughable (for me, who doesn’t care who is relegated and finds the whole ‘World Tour’ thing meaningless).

    • If you’re team boss worried about relegation, trust me you be among the ten people on the planet who know the table backwards. You can see the teams Cofidis and XDS-Astana have sent Down Under with this in mind.

      • Just to return to this. Didn’t Cofidis and the always likeable Bryan Coquard pick up some eye catching results in the TDU. A win and a couple of podiums. It helps bring the team to 171 points in the year to date, with 130 of those being claimed by Coquard himself.

        XDS had a quieter TDU but a much busier couple of days in Spain, packing the top tens in those 1.1 races, bringing in 345 points (also including a few from Higuita in Australia).

        Now of course it’s a long way to go, and a huge number of points to bridge – but this is the method by which it will be done. I’m looking forward to the relegation bar chart updates already.

  2. This is actually really interesting (or I’m just a massive nerd).

    But can anyone explain – why are there the three tiers of WT stage races?

    That is, why are the TdU, Tour de Suisse etc worth more than the Volta, Itzulia etc, which in turn are worth more than UAE, Guangxi?

    Has there always been some kind of tiered prestige-gap between the three sets of stage races, and I’ve just missed this?

    Some of it seems fair enough – eg Guangxi – but not sure I’d have had TdU above the Volta and Itzulia in my own personal rankings…

    Any answers welcome!

    • “Originally” (that is to say until 2014 or 2015) all stages races in the World Tour were equal in terms of points (100, while Giro and Vuelta were 170 and Tour 200).
      The third tier of World Tour stage races appeared in 2017 when the WT calendar was exapanded with new events.

      That leaves me a little bit in the dark when and why exactly Volta, Itzulia and TdP were kind of moved to a lower rank…

      • In 2016 we had a double ranking (!), the WT ranking, same as before, all shorter stage races being worth the same, awarding the “WT Winner” title and the “UCI World ranking” where the Spanish stage races were already granting as many points as Pologne and less than Pa-Ni or Ti-Ad. In 2017 the two point systems were unified into the latter. As this second system was also (or mainly) meant as an internal measure method to establish sporting value, it needed to introduce some more gradual (and closer to reality) point scale or it wouldn’t have worked at all for its practical ends. I still struggle to understand why the Spanish races had to be demoted, yet, besides what I conjectured below.

    • The more relevant shorter stage races are essentially seven (aprox. calendar order):

      Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico, Volta a Catalunya, Vuelta al País Vasco (Itzulia), Romandie, Dauphiné and Suisse.

      This is pretty much undisputed and it’s still mirrored by more or less any meaningful metric.

      In previous years I’ve writing several rants explaining how absurd was it to have Catalunya and Itzulia, which are probably among the best of the above set, one step below.

      However, I guess (wild guessing, let me stress it) that the simple truth is that if you want to, say, give more prestige to some races which really don’t have as much, you’re more or less forced to mix things up. If you push down the most logical candidate, say, Romandie, you’ll strengthen the idea that the 2nd tier races aren’t really worthy, but if you put some good races in the 2nd tier, you’ll suggest that Pologne and Benelux are very good, too, although not first-class.

      Anyway, maybe there’s some better explication out there, but surely not sporting value.

      People love to speak of the “complicated” calendar, but what makes things complicated is the various attempts to tweak what’s otherwise pretty much clear.
      Yet, we don’t want to prevent investors from believing that their Tour or Britain, Emirates or Guangxi can be an event of any major sporting interest, do we?

      PD TDU is a worthy event for several reasons, surely not the actual level of competitive cycling sported there, yet I understand that for several reasons it makes sense for the UCI to overboost it.
      Australia has been steadily a key country in cycling for a quarter of a century now (after the pioneering athletes they had already had before the 00s, I mean), unlike, say, USA, and we’ll see what about UK next.
      Dunno, Colombia has a longer tradition and reached higher peaks, but isn’t so steady either, same for Poland or Denmark on a lower step (although Denmark is currently on an absolute high). Australia is now probably what Switzerland was for the sport 30 or 40 years ago.
      Yet the geographical situation makes it harder for athletes and fans, so it looks just logical to push their race up a little, even more so as it falls in a void calendar spot.
      China or various petro-State is only about going for the money.

      • It’s all about trying to make cycling less Eurocentric. It leads to weird results, to be sure, but I understand the rationale for trying to pump up the importance of non-European races. On the other hand, it says something about the current state of cycling that the older, more established races you list don’t elicit a lot of excitement outside of the cycling bubble.

        • Few races elicit much excitement outside of the cycling bubble, save for site-specific interest by locals (when they aren’t too annoyed by road closures).

          However, KBK is still a solid product both in Belgium and among Classics lovers. Most in the last couple of decades at least would value it well above Omloop which gets more (specialist) media attention essentially because the public is hungry for racing after the winter pause. It’s probably one single step below GW, like E3, and above, say, Waregem, although the latter is growing in recent years.

          Milano-Torino and Paris-Tours have been disrupted violently by cycling politics. Races which have been deliberately sacrificed to reach some political and calendar balance. Whether it was wortho not, I’d dare not to say.

          Ruta del Sol always was a small and fun prep race, not much more, it got some attention for the same reasons of Omloop, and when some big guns liked it and decided to turn it into a personal test. It’s like a much smaller Pa-Ni, but it never was greater than that, even if it accidentally had had some big editions.

          • I’m not Australian, so I don’t know first hand (maybe an Aussie can set me straight), but it seems like TDU does get a fair amount of attention in Oz. You may have your break now.

          • Here in Australia, the elite National Championship road races (including U23 Men), all stages of the Tour Down Under, and the Cadel Evans races are broadcast live on television across the country. This includes both men’s and women’s events. While the majority of the viewership may be those who cycle themselves, the coverage is supported by advertisements and the rights are competed for by several networks, so they are not run as charities.

            The TDU attracts good squads (albeit not always the top riders) from World Tour and some Pro Continental teams for both men’s and women’s events – most of them remain to do the Cadel Evans races. Kicking off racing in our summer conditions seems to appeal to the riders, based on how many are keen to come.

        • To follow up along this thread, of course all or most high level races (not even top ones) tend to get a fair amount of local interest, even outside the cycling bubble: otherwise, barring the money-pumped events like Desert Races & Co., they wouldn’t survive long. The question is which races might be able to break the national limits. Few, really,

          If you instead meant that older and more established races get interest only by the cycling world *even on their own national scale*, well, no, in that case, at least speaking of Europe, you’re just wrong, unless the race is being deliberately killed more or less softly by organisers or other institutions. Of course, there’s an undeniable trend in that direction, but we’re still far from that sort of situation. Hard to say that >500K full single viewers in a given nation and thousands / tens of thousands of roadside spectators (I’m referring to the *smallest* figures) are just “cycling bubble” (or it’d be pretty big a bubble).

          • I’m not disagreeing with any of what you’re saying. I’m talking about what the UCI is trying to do in spreading cycling outside of France, Italy, Belgium and Spain. I agree that the cycling bubble in Europe is quite large, but ultimately it’s tiny by the standards of many other sports. I personally don’t care as long as races continue; I just think it’s the reason that KBK or Paris-Tours doesn’t get as much recognition in terms of UCI points.

          • @The Other Craig
            I think we indeed agree about the underlying process (also check what I wrote re: TDU).

            That said, I would not say that the reason why some races face point reduction is by any means their supposedly lesser interest by the public, be it the local one, the cyclist fans or any broader category – Itzulia being obviously the main counterexample, but also KBK or Paris-Tour work quite well to disprove such a point. Despite facing objective difficulties for several (mainly external) reasons, they’re kept well afloat by the interest they’re still able to generate. Have a look at KBK’s palmarés compared to say Omloop, although the latter is being pushed strongly in the media as it belongs to Flanders Classics, unlike “the Donkey Race”. Paris-Tours is indeed a more complicated story and related to internal affairs, too (check it against the politically well-supported growth of Plouay aka Bretagne Classics through the last couple of decade), but, again, it’s more about undermining an existing capital than just coming to terms with a given situation of intrinsic decline.

            Finally, I think you should measure cycling’s impact as a sport compared to other sports essentially in Europe and in European terms, as it’s still no way a global sport whatsoever. Just as if you measure Superbowl’s impact in Europe, it’s close to null, same for baseball or NHL, the NBA being the only USA sport someway followed in Europe (viewers are about 1% of cycling’s smaller races, let alone GTs).
            The situation is always changing but currently in Italy only some chosen football matches and very very few F1 races can match or beat the average Giro stage.
            To enter the realm of millions viewers you need very specific single events (football’s Worlds, long-awaited finals and the like).
            Of course this depends on the TV model, but that’s part of the actual social reality, too.
            Similarly, not many regular sport events can boast a 50M impact in revenues for the surrounding area (measured not promised) as the “smallest of Monuments”, i.e. Giro di Lombardia. The Monza F1 GP, one of the big “money spinners” sits between 150 and 180, which is much a more, and yet gives you a measure of cycling not being that much smaller.
            Let me stress it again, you need to check it against its context, as this models are barely transnational, let alone truly global.

            If you lose context, you misunderstand the meaning of the phenomenon. If I recall correctly, the average 2024 viewership for NBA matches *in the USA* sits between 35% and 50% of any Giro stage… in Italy only. If one got fixated on those figures, the actual picture would be completely lost.

            Cycling is going through a long transition from several POVs, which makes it more complicated to take the right picture, but my impression is tht currently the dominant narrative is rather underestimating the existing assets of the sport… which, let me add, might be pretty typical when such a narrative precedes an attempt to just buy the whole thing.

        • If reducing eurocentricity is the goal, why is the UAE Tour ranked at the lowest level among the one-week stage races (ie below Benelux, Tour of Poland etc)? Just all seems quite illogical.

          • That is, I gather, because Eneco/BinckBank/Benelux/Renewi Tour and Tour de Pologne were considered “old” WT races when no less than 11 new races were added to the WT calendar.
            The old races were 400-pointers and all the new races, regardless of geographical location, were 300-pointers.

            Since then, though, some of the new races have been moved up. Or at least Strade Bianche has, it is now a 400-pointer and as valuable as for instance Donostia San Sebastian.

          • I do think it’s funny how convoluted this all can be, but it’s actually part of the reason I love cycling. There’s so much room for debate and so many ways to be a successful rider/team. I would be disappointed if a “One Cycling” kind of entity standardized the sport and took away a lot of this crazy nuance.

  3. I read, thanks to J Evans on the ‘Neo-Pros to watch’ blog, that:
    ” the UCI have made a new rule that prohibits WorldTour and ProTeam riders from racing in the under-23 category at the World Championships. ”
    Yet, I see here that winning those U23 Worlds is 200 points, to the benefit of… which teams, exactly?

    • I see no contradiction.
      Well,first of all, UCI point are given to riders, not teams. And those points are not only counted for WT an PT teams.
      Also, the new rule is from 2025 Worlds on, and the point rulebook is older than that and covers for instance the points for the last 2 years earned at Worlds.

  4. All 7 historic European one-week races should have the same weight and points. Tour de Suisse, Catalonia, Dauphiné, Paris-Nice, Tirreno, Basque Country, and Romandie (Midi-Libre would also be there if still existed) are in a league apart from the others, no matter how much money these younger races may have.

    • “Historic” is a moot point. And it is useful to know a bit about the history of these events.

      Back in the mid 1960s, the big stage race were Paris-Nice, Romandie, Dauphine and Suisse. Nobody much rated the Spanish races, and Tirreno did not exist. Two other important stage races were Paris-Luxembourg and especially Midi Libre. The Midi-Libre only stopped around 15 years ago. Merckx won ALL the important one-week stage races of his era, including Paris-Luxembourg and Midi Libre (he didn’t win either Tirreno or Itzulia since they were not important).

      Tirreno was introduced at the end of the 1960s to rival Paris-Nice, and became an important race in the mid-1970s. Itzulia only became important in about 1990, and was considered a pretty small race before that time. Catalonia was an end-of-season jolie until the calendar reform in 1995. In the 1990s the two Spanish races would have universally been considered much less important than the other races (of the seven HC stage races of that era, which are the “seven”). Hence the points allocation would have made sense at that time. Over time, some races become more important while other races decline in importance. This is why many today, for instance, rate Romandie below Catalonia.

      • I generally agree, yet this sort of analysis is lacking a couple of significant points. To start with, Itzulia wasn’t there for decades because of Franco’s dictatorship. When it was stopped mid-30s it was already a surprisingly international race, above standard (relative to the period), due to several geographical factors among which tourism. The second point is also made clear by Itzulia itself: Spain in the 70s had a brilliant national scene with an impressive average level, which meant that even when those races weren’t very international, especially between mid-70s and mid-80s for Itzulia (yet it had from the very beginning the likes of Poulidor, Anquetil, Jan Janssen starting and more often than not going hard for it, as later Agostinho, Baronchelli, Moser or Kelly), still the technical level was *extremely high* as you had athletes like Ocaña, the super KAS with Lasa, Perurena, Tarangu, later Galdós, and then again Lejarreta or Delgado who make one even suspect that other international competitors preferred to stay away in order not to be pushed too hard 😉
        This latter aspect is partially true for the Volta, too, although, as I said, very partially, because it was indeed a season closer for many, hold after the Worlds, which sometimes meant great legs (mid September or so) some other times tired athletes who preferred not to show up. It’s got a story of great ups and downs: for example it had a great decade from the end of the 60s to the end of the 70s, totally comparable to Romandie or Dauphiné during those years and way better than Suisse, which in other decades had been “the third GT” (of course not the Vuelta wasn’t it) but also had its moments. The fact that it was a season closer, anyway, shouldn’t take that much away from it. You must take it into account, but you can find similar considerations to be applied to different races: as I always say, depending on the prep style more in vogue in a given period, Dauphiné may have a great startlist… of riders who actually don’t want too much to win it or don’t care anyway because it’s all about preparing the TDF.

        All that said, points are awarded for present institutional use in current cycling, so even if I surely agree about “protecting” historical races because they’re a cultural and social capital (as UCI indeed did with Itzulia when needed), i.e., plus fostering quality participation there, as they’ve got deep roots which help to avoid the Tour of Cali effect… all the same, given that points are used to “evaluate” team performance and the likes, they should also mirror current value and practices (with a scope of one or two decades, of course).

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