The Atacama desert. The Sahara. These are some of the driest spots on the planet. How about Roubaix in the north of France? It hasn’t rained there since 2002.
Statistics
Team Victory Rankings
We’re one quarter of the way through the cycling season already. 25% of the season’s racing days have been ridden. As we go into the peak classics season Omega Pharma-Quick Step and Giant-Shimano lead.
But as you’ll see below the win rate has almost no correlation to a team’s World Tour ranking, winning often doesn’t mean a team tops the rankings. Plus there’s the Pro Conti chart below.
Team Victory Rankings
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.
2014 World Tour Rider Age and Nationality
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.
Team Victory Rankings
The Tour of Taihu finished over the weekend and with it, the last high-ranking UCI road race of 2013. So here is the final count of wins obtained by teams in 2013. There’s a look at the second division Pro Continental level as well as a quick analysis of which teams are most dependent on one rider for their wins. Also is the idea of being out of contract an extra incentive to win? A look at the results suggests not.
Albert Timmer’s Long Year
Who had the biggest year in 2013? Certainly in qualitative terms Chris Froome is the obvious choice and winning awards and exhibition races alike. But what about Adam Hansen’s Giro-Tour-Vuelta grand tour trinity? All valid but in terms of pure numbers it’s Albert Timmer (Argos-Shimano) who’s had the biggest season.
2014 Pro Cycling Calendar Analysis
You can download the 2014 calendar as a series of individual events and dates. But what’s the big picture? Where are all these races, which are the busiest months of the year and what’s the split of races between their different categories?
The Bio Passport and Jonathan Tiernan-Locke
This post isn’t about doping. Instead it’s about procedures and probabilities so if you want something more exciting, wait for the preview of this Sunday’s Il Lombardia race due out soon.
Team Sky’s Jonathan Tiernan-Locke was pulled out from the British team going to the worlds at the last moment and there was talk of an injury with some and fatigue from others. But the weekend saw the story that he was being questioned by the UCI about his biological passport data. What has happened to get these questions and what is next?
Team Victory Rankings
With the Vuelta done here is the listing of team wins so far this season. This will be the penultimate version this year as we’re now into the final section of the season with just 47 of the 553 days of racing remaining.
Team Victory Rankings
With the final stage of the Tour of Denmark Mark Cavendish took his 16th win of the year, putting first for the number of wins this year, ahead of Marcel Kittel and Peter Sagan.
These rankings are simplistic they still help explain plenty, from departing sponsorship to in-race strategy. And behind the numbers we can see the gap between the World Tour and the lower level Pro Continental ranks which is both quantitative and qualitative where the second division teams win less but, uniquely, are keen to avoid promotion.