Battle for 2023-2025 WT licenses

[Samamba]

I accept your point, but are riders and teams really going to do that in the midst of the biggest race in the world, taking place in July.

There's teams that have been going for top 10s or top 15s with multiple riders all year long instead of trying to win a race...
Points should be even more top heavy and not a single non-WT race should give points for finishing outside the top 10.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Their multiple-GT-winner's recovery takes a little longer than expected.

But the thing is, it was always a gamble signing him on as big a contract as they did when there was no baseline post-injury performance, given the severity of the injuries he sustained. Even if he does perform at a not unreasonable expected level and gets some lower end GT top 10s but is not the guy he once was, they're still struggling to stay in the hunt.

 

[Samamba]

But the thing is, it was always a gamble signing him on as big a contract as they did when there was no baseline post-injury performance, given the severity of the injuries he sustained. Even if he does perform at a not unreasonable expected level and gets some lower end GT top 10s but is not the guy he once was, they're still struggling to stay in the hunt.

They didn't just sign him for results, they signed him for publicity mainly. I've said this before. Sponsors don't sign riders for results, they want publicity. They'll 100% want a "has been" over someone who has decent result but noone cares about. Obviously the best is to get someone who get such good results that he will get the amount of publicity you want (the difference between Gilbert and De Lie at Lotto for example). It's kind of sad, but this is how it is going to be as long as a teams income is coming from sponsors for 99%. That's what I mean when i say that sponsor interests doesnt match with a really competitive regelation/promotion system.

 

[saunaking]

There's teams that have been going for top 10s or top 15s with multiple riders all year long instead of trying to win a race...

Yes the points scale should be steeper. You see stuff like 6th & 8th just as valuable as 3rd and 15th
100
60
30
15
10
8
6
4
2
would be better
you get the idea

meanwhile yesterday its like

1			PHILIPSEN Jasper	Alpecin-Deceuninck	125​	04:24:36​
2			DE LIE Arnaud	Lotto Soudal	85​	+ 00​
3			GROENEWEGEN Dylan	Team BikeExchange-Jayco	70​	+ 00​
4			DEGENKOLB John	Team DSM	60​	+ 00​
5			VAN GESTEL Dries	TotalEnergies	50​	+ 00​
6			MEEUS Jordi	BORA-hansgrohe	40​	+ 00​
7			COQUARD Bryan	Cofidis	35​	+ 00​
8			MANZIN Lorrenzo	TotalEnergies	30​	+ 00​
9			THIJSSEN Gerben	Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux	25​	+ 00​
10			KANTER Max	Movistar Team	20​	+ 00​
11			CONSONNI Simone	Cofidis	15​	+ 00​
12			EINHORN Itamar	Israel-Premier Tech	10​

 

[Billie]

Piet Allagaert should not be in the top 101 of any points system or ranking basically. He's the personalization of the abuse some teams did of this points system.

 

[Samamba]

Piet Allagaert should not be in the top 101 of any points system or ranking basically. He's the personalization of the abuse some teams did of this points system.

A 1000 points in 2 years time with 0 wins and only 2 top 3s (in random french .1s). A typical Cofidis "sprinter". He would be nowhere if you just made your pointsystem in .1s and .Pro races way more topheavy. Winner should still get a good amount of points, same for guys on the podium, but no way getting 7th, 10th and 12th with 3 C tier sprinters all sprinting on their own should get you 65 UCI points (almost as much as getting someone on the podium).

Consonni has like 850 points without a single win, and maybe 5 top 3s

 

[Libertine Seguros]

They didn't just sign him for results, they signed him for publicity mainly. I've said this before. Sponsors don't sign riders for results, they want publicity. They'll 100% want a "has been" over someone who has decent result but noone cares about. Obviously the best is to get someone who get such good results that he will get the amount of publicity you want (the difference between Gilbert and De Lie at Lotto for example). It's kind of sad, but this is how it is going to be as long as a teams income is coming from sponsors for 99%. That's what I mean when i say that sponsor interests doesnt match with a really competitive regelation/promotion system.

And that's the problem. You need to balance the need for results with the need for publicity. There was not enough pragmatism in terms of results or a discernible clear focus on a type of race they would target (hilly classics being the nearest for sure, but obviously they would be largely reliant on placements and the occasional escape) to home in on for reliable results in the same way as Lotto could expect to hoover up sprint points or Movistar could expect to harvest mountainous stage race placements.

Piet Allagaert should not be in the top 101 of any points system or ranking basically. He's the personalization of the abuse some teams did of this points system.

Arnaud de Lie has one podium at a .Pro race and all his other such results are in 1.1 and 2.1 events. Here is a far from exhaustive list of riders he has apparently been better than in 2022:

Jai Hindley
Richard Carapaz
Geraint Thomas
Fabio Jakobsen
Sérgio Higuita
Juan Ayuso
Pello Bilbao
Dylan van Baarle
Mathieu van der Poel
Matej Mohorič
Mads Pedersen
Biniam Girmay
Mikel Landa
Arnaud Démare
Enric Mas

So there we have the entire podium of the Giro, a rider off the podium of the Tour (who also won a World Tour stage race GC), two thirds of the podium of the Vuelta, and three of the winners of the four monuments raced so far this season. Even just among sprinters you've got riders who've taken multiple sprint wins and points jerseys in all three GTs and won several World Tour race stages too.

This isn't to take away from de Lie who may otherwise have been given the chance to show what he has against the elite sprinters rather than farming points in .1 races, but it shows how imbalanced the system is.

 

[Samamba]

Arnaud de Lie has one podium at a .Pro race and all his other such results are in 1.1 and 2.1 events. Here is a far from exhaustive list of riders he has apparently been better than in 2022:

Jai Hindley
Richard Carapaz
Geraint Thomas
Fabio Jakobsen
Sérgio Higuita
Juan Ayuso
Pello Bilbao
Dylan van Baarle
Mathieu van der Poel
Matej Mohorič
Mads Pedersen
Biniam Girmay
Mikel Landa
Arnaud Démare
Enric Mas

So there we have the entire podium of the Giro, a rider off the podium of the Tour (who also won a World Tour stage race GC), two thirds of the podium of the Vuelta, and three of the winners of the four monuments raced so far this season. Even just among sprinters you've got riders who've taken multiple sprint wins and points jerseys in all three GTs and won several World Tour race stages too.

This isn't to take away from de Lie who may otherwise have been given the chance to show what he has against the elite sprinters rather than farming points in .1 races, but it shows how imbalanced the system is.

The thing is that De Lie is winning races. Cycling is still about winning and winners should be rewarded, even if it's in a .1 or .Pro race. Obviously De Lie shouldn't be in the top 10 of the UCI ranking and in front of a lot of these guys but you can't forget that he has 9 wins and 3 podiums (and a 4th place in a WT classic). That means he has been performing all year long. A lot of the guys you're mentioning have not been performing all year long. There's a good reason why Vlasov is in 5th place for example. He has been leader in basically every race he started in, while Hindley for example sometimes worked for Vlasov. De Lie also has been leader in almost every race he started in. At the end of the day it's a teamsport and the individual team ranking is never going to show exactly who is the better rider (some riders simply get more opportunities to score points).

 

[Libertine Seguros]

The thing is that De Lie is winning races. Cycling is still about winning and winners should be rewarded, even if it's in a .1 or .Pro race. Obviously De Lie shouldn't be in the top 10 of the UCI ranking and in front of a lot of these guys but you can't forget that he has 9 wins and 3 podiums (and a 4th place in a WT classic). That means he has been performing all year long. A lot of the guys you're mentioning have not been performing all year long. There's a good reason why Vlasov is in 5th place for example. He has been leader in basically every race he started in, while Hindley for example sometimes worked for Vlasov. De Lie also has been leader in almost every race he started in. At the end of the day it's a teamsport and the individual team ranking is never going to show exactly who is the better rider (some riders simply get more opportunities to score points).

Sure, but the thing is ordinarily, performing as he has been, he'd have been given the chance to do bigger races where he'd be less likely to win, but could be better for him in the long run, rather than cleaning up in those small races. As it is, it's like a 2005 Murilo Fischer level outlier in terms of the calibre of the races the results were in vs. how many points were achieved (de Lie is only 20 so it's not like we can say this is an outlier because he may turn out to be elite at the top level, he's beaten some solid sprinters this year in those small races, and he's been doing it all year) - but there's also a fair few races there he wouldn't ordinarily have been in if the team wasn't farming points. He'd have gone to test his legs in races like the Tour de Pologne or Tour of Britain to help see what they have at a higher level if it weren't more beneficial for the points system to keep filling their boots in middling fields at smaller races. Plus of course the balance of points for one day races vs. stage races make it far more beneficial - (I know the dates don't match up here) why do an eight stage race (at least originally planned as such) like Britain which Gonzalo Serrano got 200 points for winning, when you could do three 1.1 races in four days like Schaal Sels, Egmont and Druivenkoers-Overijsse with 125 for each?

Andrea Guardini in 2011 won:

• 5 stages of the 2.HC Tour de Langkawi
• 1 stage of the 2.1 Tour de Qatar
• 2 stages of the 2.HC Tour of Turkey
• 1 stage of the 2.1 Tour de Slovénie
• 1 stage of the 2.1 Volta a Portugal
• 1 stage of the 2.1 Giro di Padania

That's 11 wins, plus he also had a 3rd in a stage at the .HC level and two 2nds and two 3rds at the .1 level. But Guardini almost exclusively entered stage races. I know Langkawi is massively overvalued and the field there was pretty nondescript, but it's still 5 wins at the equivalent of the .Pro level for the purpose of point comparison. In terms of the UCI standard of the race, the calibre of Guardini's wins is in fact higher than that of de Lie's.

This would have, in today's currency, been worth 217 UCI points. Barely a tenth what de Lie is worth because of the value of one-day races relative to stage races. Even if we just take de Lie's podiums (because the fact he has a bunch of other placements whereas Guardini had either bunch sprint or autobus as his only modes), de Lie's 9 wins - all bar one (which is in a stage race, so the lowest valued) at the .1 level - and three podiums are worth 1300.

So it's not just about winning, because Guardini won more and at higher UCI statuses. But a stage of a 2.Pro race is less than a sixth the value of a 1.1 race, so it's a very effective way of farming points, like going back to an earlier stage of a game to grind for XP by taking out some conveniently placed low-yield enemies very quickly, over and over again.

 

[Wyndbrook]

The thing is that De Lie is winning races. Cycling is still about winning and winners should be rewarded, even if it's in a .1 or .Pro race. Obviously De Lie shouldn't be in the top 10 of the UCI ranking and in front of a lot of these guys but you can't forget that he has 9 wins and 3 podiums (and a 4th place in a WT classic). That means he has been performing all year long. A lot of the guys you're mentioning have not been performing all year long. There's a good reason why Vlasov is in 5th place for example. He has been leader in basically every race he started in, while Hindley for example sometimes worked for Vlasov. De Lie also has been leader in almost every race he started in. At the end of the day it's a teamsport and the individual team ranking is never going to show exactly who is the better rider (some riders simply get more opportunities to score points).

Fair play to him., but they are almost all only 'chippers' and should have points awarded accordingly.

 

[Netserk]

I don't like the idea of comparing points between WT teams and non-WT teams. I can't think of any other promotion/relagation system that works this way.

How many other promotion/relegation systems have the different levels compete against each other every week? To make it like football, you need to only have WT teams in WT races and have them barred from racing non-WT races.

 

[Netserk]

Sure, but the thing is ordinarily, performing as he has been, he'd have been given the chance to do bigger races where he'd be less likely to win, but could be better for him in the long run, rather than cleaning up in those small races. As it is, it's like a 2005 Murilo Fischer level outlier in terms of the calibre of the races the results were in vs. how many points were achieved (de Lie is only 20 so it's not like we can say this is an outlier because he may turn out to be elite at the top level, he's beaten some solid sprinters this year in those small races, and he's been doing it all year) - but there's also a fair few races there he wouldn't ordinarily have been in if the team wasn't farming points. He'd have gone to test his legs in races like the Tour de Pologne or Tour of Britain to help see what they have at a higher level if it weren't more beneficial for the points system to keep filling their boots in middling fields at smaller races. Plus of course the balance of points for one day races vs. stage races make it far more beneficial - (I know the dates don't match up here) why do an eight stage race (at least originally planned as such) like Britain which Gonzalo Serrano got 200 points for winning, when you could do three 1.1 races in four days like Schaal Sels, Egmont and Druivenkoers-Overijsse with 125 for each?

Andrea Guardini in 2011 won:

• 5 stages of the 2.HC Tour de Langkawi
• 1 stage of the 2.1 Tour de Qatar
• 2 stages of the 2.HC Tour of Turkey
• 1 stage of the 2.1 Tour de Slovénie
• 1 stage of the 2.1 Volta a Portugal
• 1 stage of the 2.1 Giro di Padania

That's 11 wins, plus he also had a 3rd in a stage at the .HC level and two 2nds and two 3rds at the .1 level. But Guardini almost exclusively entered stage races. I know Langkawi is massively overvalued and the field there was pretty nondescript, but it's still 5 wins at the equivalent of the .Pro level for the purpose of point comparison. In terms of the UCI standard of the race, the calibre of Guardini's wins is in fact higher than that of de Lie's.

This would have, in today's currency, been worth 217 UCI points. Barely a tenth what de Lie is worth because of the value of one-day races relative to stage races. Even if we just take de Lie's podiums (because the fact he has a bunch of other placements whereas Guardini had either bunch sprint or autobus as his only modes), de Lie's 9 wins - all bar one (which is in a stage race, so the lowest valued) at the .1 level - and three podiums are worth 1300.

So it's not just about winning, because Guardini won more and at higher UCI statuses. But a stage of a 2.Pro race is less than a sixth the value of a 1.1 race, so it's a very effective way of farming points, like going back to an earlier stage of a game to grind for XP by taking out some conveniently placed low-yield enemies very quickly, over and over again.

I wouldn't compare stage wins to race wins.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

How many other promotion/relegation systems have the different levels compete against each other every week? To make it like football, you need to only have WT teams in WT races and have them barred from racing non-WT races.

No.
You could have it that the WT teams are competing only against other WT teams for relegation (and PCT teams competing only against other PCT teams for promotion) and make it so only points gathered in WT-races counted.

No reason to have WT teams barred from racing non-WT races, you just dont make these races count on the ranking that decides relegation. Football teams still competes in Champions League and cups etc without results here mattering for the league table.

 

[Netserk]

No.
You could have it that the WT teams are competing only against other WT teams for relegation (and PCT teams competing only against other PCT teams for promotion) and make it so only points gathered in WT-races counted.

No reason to have WT teams barred from racing non-WT races, you just dont make these races count on the ranking that decides relegation. Football teams still competes in Champions League and cups etc without results here mattering for the league table.

The non-WT races are the 'league' races for the non-WT teams. My point was how far the reality of cycling is from that of football, and why comparing the relegation/promotion systems doesn't make sense.

 

[Samamba]

The non-WT races are the 'league' races for the non-WT teams. My point was how far the reality of cycling is from that of football, and why comparing the relegation/promotion systems doesn't make sense.

There like 10 good reasons why it doesn't make sense. It just a completely different sport, people need stop comparing them.

 

[Armchair cyclist]

No.
You could have it that the WT teams are competing only against other WT teams for relegation (and PCT teams competing only against other PCT teams for promotion) and make it so only points gathered in WT-races counted.

So which PTs are promoted depends almost entirely on the invitation choices of those who own WT races? That is grossly unjust.

 

[Newcomer]

To make it like football, you need to only have WT teams in WT races and have them barred from racing non-WT races.

That is the direction we need to move forward to though to make the relagation/promotion system make sense imo. From my point of view there are a few fallacies in the current system.

1. WT status does not bring significant benefit, for certain teams, at least. For example, we have teams like B&B Hotel which is a ProTour team but constantly gets invited to the biggest races like TDF and PR just because it is French. Meanwhile there are teams like Alpecin which is strong enough to gain auto invitation to all WT Races so that they might not want to get promoted due to the extra burden of racing all WT races.
2. Comparing between different teams is not exactly fair because the racing calendar is not fair for different teams. Teams like Arkea or Lotto have the benefits of farming a lot of points in their local smaller races, which there is a lot, and not having problems with their sponsors as they gain domestic popularity by winning those races. However, for teams like IPT or EF, they don't have such a large domestic racing calendar and their sponsor won't be as happy if they decided to farm points in Belgian or French races.
3. This is the point I raised in my original post, towards the end of a cycle we will see the struggling WT teams try to get points in smaller races and basically gives up the big races where they don't allocate much points. This is not ideal for me. By the way, I don't believe this pattern would stop in the next cycle just because the WT teams are more aware of relagation risks. It is natural for teams to do so unless they are all safe.

So my idea is the most prestigious races should be WT races and should be only for WT teams (and the most-recent relagated teams have the wildcard to it) to make every team pursue WT status, and the relagation battle between WT teams is only in WT races. Similarly, I would select a number of races only for ProTour teams where they race for promotion. We would still have a lot of other races for all teams to prepare towards their main goal.

 

[Ricco']

So my idea is the most prestigious races should be WT races and should be only for WT teams (and the most-recent relagated teams have the wildcard to it) to make every team pursue WT status, and the relagation battle between WT teams is only in WT races. Similarly, I would select a number of races only for ProTour teams where they race for promotion. We would still have a lot of other races for all teams to prepare towards their main goal.

This would kill the 2nd tier teams in France, Spain and Italy. And in Spain and Italy they are hanging by a thread compared to 10 or 15 years ago.

I would get rid of the automatic invitation to the two best ProSeries team. For the best Pro team, give them 2 GTs, 4 Monuments and 6 to 7 other races to choose for an automatic wildcard. For the 2nd best team, 1 GT, 2 monuments and 3 to 4 other races to choose for. And let the organizers decide the rest of the wildcards.

If pro teams don't want to choose which WT races to go for, they would be forced to apply for WT status.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

So which PTs are promoted depends almost entirely on the invitation choices of those who own WT races? That is grossly unjust.

No I was talking only about the relegation part of the system. The WT-races matters for WT-teams.
For PCT teams, in the separate standings for PCT teams, it could be like now, both WT-races and lower races counting.

 

[Sciatic]

This would kill the 2nd tier teams in France, Spain and Italy. And in Spain and Italy they are hanging by a thread compared to 10 or 15 years ago.

I would get rid of the automatic invitation to the two best ProSeries team. For the best Pro team, give them 2 GTs, 4 Monuments and 6 to 7 other races to choose for an automatic wildcard. For the 2nd best team, 1 GT, 2 monuments and 3 to 4 other races to choose for. And let the organizers decide the rest of the wildcards.

If pro teams don't want to choose which WT races to go for, they would be forced to apply for WT status.

One thing I’ve been enlightened about during this discussion is that whatever system is used it should not be to the detriment of pro-continental teams. Their smaller races help keep bike racing popular (where those races exist) and as LS and others have pointed out, it benefits WT races when the wildcard teams are strong enough to contribute to the action.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I wouldn't compare stage wins to race wins.

These are all bunch sprints against middling fields though, but being a one day flat race instead of a stage race increases the value by 9 times. When it comes to the value of winning a sprint at, say, Gent-Wevelgem compared to a stage of the Tour de Pologne, to pick a WT stage race, then sure, but a lot of these 1.1 races that end in sprints are fairly interchangeable with stage race sprints imo.

 

[hmpower]

What new pro-continental teams. are stepping up bar Black Spoke next year?

 

[Netserk]

These are all bunch sprints against middling fields though, but being a one day flat race instead of a stage race increases the value by 9 times. When it comes to the value of winning a sprint at, say, Gent-Wevelgem compared to a stage of the Tour de Pologne, to pick a WT stage race, then sure, but a lot of these 1.1 races that end in sprints are fairly interchangeable with stage race sprints imo.

Everyone present is trying to win or get as good a result as possible in a one-day race. In a stage race, most riders and teams are not optimising for stage results of the flattest stages.

Now, I'd have the .1 races not worth much (and no race that is a certain bunch sprint should have a high ranking), but I would always massively favour race wins over stage wins. Yes, winning Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne should be worth far more than a stage of Baloise Belgium Tour. At the very least 5 times as much, but 9 is not obviously wrong.

 

[nedhill]

Please don't describe him as charismatic

Please keep your personal/character attacks to yourself.

 

[Ricco']

I would also change a .PRO one-day race awarding the same number of points a .PRO stage race.

Two 3rd places in .PRO one-day races are as valuable as a .PRO GC win with two stage wins and 2 days of GC lead.