UCI World Ranking is broken: let’s fix it

UCI World Tour licenses currently helded by teams are going to expire at the end of this season, and this is an important aspect to be taken into account while watching the races during the next year. Would’ve liked to cover this aspect in a post, but Inner Ring got me first, so won’t bother to explain it again here as I think you can’t find a better explanation than his one.

What I would like instead to get to the attention is how the points are given and how these points can directly contribute to a promotion or a relegation for three years of a single team, considering all the implications that this may involve and also, on a single year, how this system decides who can get all the invitations and who cannot in the next one.

How the ranking works

First of all, the UCI World Ranking is a ranking of the men Elite and the Under 23 riders. This has a lot of implications because unlike Women Elite, Men Junior and Women Junior calendar, Men Elite and Men Under 23 are riding the same calendar and this is even more evident when you see Elite riders below 23 years of age racing in World Championships Under 23 race. This means, for example, that Remco Evenepoel next year if he wants can race Tour de l’Avenir and cumulate the points he gets there with the points of Giro d’Italia and that can be the same for every team having an under 23 riders. Under 23 limitation is so only an age limitation, not a team limitation – if Alpecin-Fenix can line-up 8 under 23 riders for example, they can line up in a 1.2U event and the main ones are for national teams, so they don’t even need that. (And the point you get with your nation are added to your team too!)

The individual ranking is a 52-week rolling ranking and it’s done similarly to the Tennis system. All the points from a race stays in the ranking until the next edition of the same race take place and – if it doesn’t – until the end of the season. Cumulative rankings of the best 8 athletes for each nation are combined in the nation ranking that determines the spots for the World Championships each year. Team ranking is instead combined with the top 10 athletes per team, but based on the season.

Points are assigned per race, in each race. The more you race, the more points you get – because in World Tour races points are given to the top 60. Stages in stage races give points to top 5 in Grand Tours and top 3 in the rest of World Tour events. Grand Tours have also a bonus for secondary classifications, wearing a leader jersey also gives you points and of course the National, Continental Championships and the Olympic Events. Also Inner Ring got them here, so won’t focus more on the problems rather than the points scale itself.

Point scale inconsistencies

The currently pyramid of points is defined as follows.

Level	Stage Races	One day-races
1000 points to Winner	Tour de France
850 points to Winner	Giro d’Italia Vuelta a Espana
600 points to Winner		World Championships Elite Road Race Olympics Road Race
500 points to Winner	Tour Down Under Paris – Nice Tirreno – Adriatico Criterium du Dauphiné Tour de Romandie Tour de Suisse	Milano – Sanremo Gent – Wevelgem Ronde van Vlaanderen Paris – Roubaix Amstel Gold Race Liege – Bastogne – Liege GP Quebec GP Montreal Il Lombardia
400 points to Winner	Volta a Catalunya Itzulia Basque Country Tour de Pologne BinckBank Tour	E3 Saxo Bank Classic La Fleche Wallonne Clasica San Sebastian Classic Hamburg Bretagne Classics
350 points to Winner		World Championships Elite ITT Olympics ITT
300 points to Winner	UAE Tour Tour of Guangxi	Cadel Evans Classic Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Strade Bianche De Panne Dwaars Door Vlaanderen Eschborn – Frankfurt World Championships Mixed Relay TTT
250 points to Winner		Continental Championships Elite Road Race
200 points to Winner	Any ProSeries event	Any ProSeries event Worlds Championships Under 23 Road Race
140 points to Winner	Tour de l’Avenir
125 points to Winner	Any Class 1 event	Any Class 1 event Continental Championships Under 23 Road Race World Championships Under 23 ITT
120 points to Winner	Tour de France KOM/Points jersey	Tour de France Stage
100 points to Winner	Giro d’Italia KOM/Points jersey Vuelta a Espana KOM/Points jersey	Giro d’Italia Stage Vuelta a Espana Stage
70 points to Winner	Any Under 23 Nations Cup Event	Continental Championships Elite ITT Continental Championships Mixed Relay TTT Any Under 23 Nations Cup Event
60 points to Winner		Tour Down Under Stage Paris – Nice Stage Tirreno – Adriatico Stage Criterium du Dauphiné Stage Tour de Romandie Stage Tour de Suisse Stage
50 points to Winner		National Championships Continental Championships Under 23 ITT Volta a Catalunya Stage Itzulia Basque Country Stage Tour de Pologne Stage BinckBank Tour Stage
40 points to Winner	Any Class 2 event	UAE Tour Stage Tour of Guangxi Stage Any Class 2 event

So, based on this, Tour de France winner got 1000 points, the maximum on the scale. If you go in Canada, doing GP Quebec and Montreal winning both you get the same amount of points in two days. A Canadian GP gave the same points of a monument classic – and the same of Tour Down Under that is a january preparation race that in no way has an impact on how a season of a rider is judged. All of them got anyway more points than a World Tour stage.

Stages races are really underdimensioned, considering that a Tirreno-Adriatico stage gave you only 60 points. If I am a decent ProSeries team and I want to farm points at this point I would consider to go to a couple of Class 2 events (World Tour teams are not admitted there) rather than asking a Wild Card for the Tour de Suisse – I’ve more chances to get points there.

Class .1 and Class .2 races gave less points but are basically 75% of the calendar. In 2022 are scheduled 123 1.1 events, 116 1.2 events, 66 2.1 events and 88 2.2 events. ProSeries events are 33 classics and 28 stage races just to comparison. This basically leaves potentially 29.875 points combined in all the Class 1 events if you hypotetically win all of them vs 12.200 for the ProSeries category. All first places in all the World Tour events, not counting jerseys and stages will give you ‘only’ 16.200 points.

This explains why, for example, Intermarche-Wanty ended with a better 2021 ranking than Education First. Vaughters team won 12 World Tour races – one classic and 11 stages while Wanty only three. Anyway, they got 500 points between Binche, Omloop van Het Houtland, Classic Besancon and Egmont Cycling Race, 20 points more than EF winning the three Vuelta stages with Cort and the Giro one with Bettiol.

A more realistic example: Danny Van Poppel got 250 points for winning Binche-Chimay-Binche and Egmont Cycling Race. Mark Cavendish got 120 points for winning the green jersey in Tour de France. So, according to the UCI rules, winning the Egmont Cycling Race gaves you the same amount of points that you can obtain

• Ending 12th in Tour de France
• Ending 8th in a monument
• Ending 5th in a minor world tour race like the UAE Tour or the Omloop or even the Strade Bianche
• Winning a stage in Tour de France (120 points)

So yes, winning a sprint against Bonifazio and Mozzato gave you more points than winning a stage in the most important and packed event of the World. Winning a Tour de France stage is no way less important than winning the Omloop, the Strade, the Tour of Turkey or the Eschborn-Frankfurt. And this is why Van Poppel is ahead of a guy who won the green jersey and four TDF stages in the individual ranking.

Mixed relay in worlds it not only a pointless showcase event – pointless because it has no equal during the year (while at least with the TTTs by trade team we know what was the best team in the world and they do them normally in Grand Tour) but is also being evaluated 300 points per rider, the same of Strade Bianche. So basically having a good time trialer can give you 300 points if he is in the winning team of an event that is not even dependant from your trade team. Definitely points obtained while in NT should not be considered in team ranking.

So, imagine now you are the General Manager of the Lotto-Soudal, you already lost one of your sponsor because Soudal is going with Quickstep replacing Deceuninck and your World Tour license is at risk. What will you do? The best strategy with this ranking is just send Caleb Ewan to all the .1 races he can win and get the more amount of point he can collect. He’ll get more points winning a .1 classics than a Grand Tour stage!

Possible solutions

The World Ranking was intended to be a classification for all the teams, to use it for the mandatory invitations in the UCI World Tour events. It’s anyway clear that it doesn’t work at is should, underrating the importance of the stage races, in particular the Grand Tours prizing the teams obtaining victories and placements in minor races immediately behind the top positions.

One solution can be taking into account a limited number of non World Tour events for each riders. In the tennis ranking you have 19 tournaments being counted into it: the Davis Cup (= the Worlds), the Slams (=the Grand Tour and the Monuments), the 1000s (=the rest of World Tour) and the six best results from the other tournament (=the rest of the races). This would limited the point farming for the licenses making the World Tour races more relevant.

Surely the stages in the stages races should be more valuable, specially in Tour de France – the same for the secondary classifications. The big mistakes here are also having other classics at the same level of the monuments and in general not considering how a season is shaped for the top riders.

While Grand Tours have a precise hierarchy – TDF, Giro, Vuelta – in the first part of the season there are only two specifical races for GC riders that are a target and not a preparation race for something else and these are Nice and Tirreno. The third more important race historically, even if now is a TDF preparation race, it’s the Tour de Suisse. Taking into account all of that, here’s my proposal for a better point scale of the World Tour events, keeping everyting else as it stands.

Level	Stage Races	One day-races
2000 points to Winner	Tour de France
1500 points to Winner	Giro d’Italia
1200 points to Winner	Vuelta a Espana
900 points to Winner		World Championships Elite Road Race Olympics Road Race
800 points to Winner		Milano – Sanremo Ronde van Vlaanderen Paris – Roubaix Liege – Bastogne – Liege Il Lombardia
600 points to Winner	Paris – Nice Tirreno – Adriatico Tour de Suisse	Gent – Wevelgem Amstel Gold Race
500 points to Winner	Criterium du Dauphiné Volta a Catalunya Tour de France Points/KOM Classification	La Fleche Wallonne Clasica San Sebastian Classic Hamburg Bretagne Classics
400 points to Winner	Itzulia Basque Country Tour de Romandie	E3 Saxo Bank Classic Strade Bianche Tour de France Stage
350 points to Winner	Tour Down Under Tour de Pologne BinckBank Tour Giro Points/KOM Classification	GP Quebec GP Montreal Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Eschborn – Frankfurt
300 points to Winner	UAE Tour Tour of Guangxi Vuelta Points/KOM Classification	Cadel Evans Classic De Panne Dwaars Door Vlaanderen Giro Stage
250 points to Winner		World Championships Elite ITT Olympics ITT Vuelta Stage
200 points to Winner		Paris – Nice stage Tirreno – Adriatico stage Tour de Suisse stage
150 points to Winner		Criterium du Dauphiné stage Volta a Catalunya stage
140 points to Winner		Itzulia Basque Country stage Tour de Romandie stage
130 points to Winner		Tour Down Under stage Tour de Pologne stage BinckBank Tour stage
125 points to Winner		UAE Tour stage Tour of Guangxi stage

In this way the events that really matters in the World of Cycling are prized as they should, having more realistic rankings specially for the positions that matters for the World Tour licenses assignations. Let me know what do you think about the current situation and the proposed point scale in the comments and see you in 2022.