Yes, TTs earn big points in this system.
Thanks. Clearly debatable. The relative points between categories has a huge impact. Just as an example 25 points for winning PR compared with 40 points for winning the Olympics or 20 points for winning TT WC/OC or 20 points for winning eg Tour de Suisse.
It's quite difficult to arrive at a "fair" relative assessment between races but a few metrics that possibly could be used would be
i) rider/team participation: the more/stronger >>> the more competition >>> the more points, eg TDF gets the most points (but should it be ~2,5 times more than a Monument?)
ii) attention/media coverage: the more >>> the more points, eg Ronde. Unfortunately fresh stats aren't that easy to come by but this compilation gives some indications:
https://www.cyclingopinions.nl/wp-c...TV-Viewing-Professional-Road-Cycling-2019.pdf
Quite clearly TDF is the standout cycling event in the world each year but then comes the Monuments and some notable one day races.
Global viewership in 2019 by race and country:
(Spain Italy Wallonia France Sweden Denmark Flanders Netherlands)
1. Tour de France 893.050 1.427.429 253.938 3.700.000 44.293 263.534 564.866 850.000 7.997.110
2. Ronde van Vlaanderen 175.000 1.272.933 230.221 1.125.000 14.000 81.000 1.072.321 516.000 4.486.475
3. Paris - Roubaix 198.000 n.a. 290.257 1.930.000 28.000 n.a. 1.006.965 709.000 4.162.222
4. World Championships: Road race 254.000 n.a. 196.999 1.103.000 136.740 129.000 830.560 702.000 3.352.299
5. Liège - Bastogne - Liège 70.000 n.a. 276.076 1.460.000 21.000 <13.000 732.108 565.000 3.124.184
6. Milano - San Remo n.a. 1.191.000 173.951 891.000 4.000 16.000 513.373 223.000 3.012.324
7. Amstel Gold Race n.a. 626.000 144.296 743.000 9.000 82.000 516.484 579.000 2.699.780
8. Vuelta a España 1.222.476 n.a. n.a. n.a. 16.714 69.000 244.000 100.810 1.653.000
9. Gent - Wevelgem n.a. n.a. 156.868 n.a. 9.000 17.000 694.477 62.000 939.345
10. Flèche Wallonne 91.000 n.a. 199.421 n.a. 11.000 8.000 319.584 233.000 862.005
"• As expected, the Tour de France has the highest combined TV‐viewership with almost8 million TV viewers on averageper stage in the selected countries. Still, in many countries it is not the best watched competition. In Flanders the Tourde France is even ranked 6th only in the above selection of races, in Wallonia it is ranked 3th. Because in Italy the Girod’Italia has higher TV ratings as well, of the8 countries in the table the Tour de France is the best‐watched cycling racein only 3: Denmark, France and the Netherlands. This comes as no surprise since this was the case in 2018 as well.
• The Ronde van Vlaanderen and Paris‐Roubaix are the second and third most popular races with4 to5 million TVviewers. Paris‐Roubaix slips to third versus last year because2 observations are missing and the Italian audience inparticular would probably have lifted the race back to 2nd place. The World Championships road race, Liège‐Bastogne‐Liège and Milano – San Remo have3 to 3,5 million TV viewers in the selected countries (note that for each of theseraces viewership information is missing for either Italy or Spain). For the races ranked8 to 10 at least2 observationsare missing. Although this underestimates the global viewership total for these races, it is unlikely to change the rankorder of the races significantly.
• From these data and other or older findings on other countries, and bringing in viewership on sports channels likeEurosport, we believe it is reasonable to assume that the real worldwide TV interest for those races in 2019 would beat most twice the size of the totals mentioned in the table, i.e. no more than 16 million TV viewers for the Tour deFrance, at most9 million for the Ronde van Vlaanderen, and so on."
Given some of the stats above the current relative weighting between different races might overestimate eg GTs and TTs and underestimate the Monuments and some 1D classics. Just as an example I cannot think that Roglic has better palmares than MVDP albeit different and almost uncomparable.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram