Should GT young rider classification be changed?

[geisterhome]

I seem to remember Pierre Latour winning a TDF white jersey in his last year of eligibility while finishing outside of the top ten just three years ago. It really should be a temporary problem, although I wouldn't mind the classification being scrapped altogether tbh.

I don't think its a temporary thing, riders are just training and working much more professionally in the junior ranks and if that's the case from a very young age there is nothing much holding back a 20 year old from performing better than someone with 30.
I'm all for a old riders classification though.

 

[titan31]

I'd go with under 23. I feel like 25 is old to be regarded as young rider at this stage. There are several cyclists with 4 years of being a professional by then, or in some cases (Ponomar) he'll have been a professional for 7 years.

 

[ExperienPT]

I thin a rookie/neo-pro jersey would be the solution

 

[pmcg76]

White jersey in the Giro used to be for first /second year pros only, but there was no upper age limit so you had guys like Toni Rominger and Piotr Ugrumov wearing it in their late 20s as they turned pro late. Which I guess is likely why they changed the rules in the 90s. It would be appropriate to switch it back in the current environment.

 

[Red Rick]

Jersey idea

"Best Daniel Martin(ez) jersey"

 

[Eclipse]

Young jersey comps are great.

Think we take it for granted being on a cycling forum as we know what's what most of the time, but for more casual fans it is a valuable indicator of the people to watch out for in years to come.

Maybe bring it down a year, but I'd not modify too much based solely on recent trends

 

[Wyndbrook]

I'e always considered it's age limit as being too old.
General sports fans find it out of step with other disciplines

 

[IndianCyclist]

generally the riders of U23 are not in world tour and are not supposed to participate in WT. Most riders join after 23 years of age and therefore the limit is made to 25. Riders below 23 are unprepared for WT races especially GTs. Looking at exceptions and make it into a rule would be really unfair to most of the U23 riders who would not even get an opportunity. The correct way would be award it only once since that rider would be expected to graduate toward the GC after that.

 

[del1962]

Perhaps the you rider jersy shoul be under 25 and grand tour debut

Then we would have Foss in the young rider jersey which seems about right

 

[Eyeballs Out]

There are only really a couple of possible outcomes for this competition

a) what we've had recently where it's a duplicate of the GC
b) what we tended to get in the past where we had the spectacle of the 10th placed rider on GC attacking but being chased down by the 7th placed rider on GC (or even his team) for the sole reason that they were both 25 or under at the start of the year

I'm not sure which is worse

 

[luckyboy]

Get Mediolanum to change KOM back to green then add a red jersey for something else like attackers/breakaways if the white jersey doesn't mean much.

 

[Withnails]

Nah. It is what it is. If young people do what slightly older people should do then good for them.

 

[hayneplane]

I vaguely remember some white jersey "battles" in earlier days when they were like 8-15th in GC.

Cunego vs Fothen the biggest one IIRC.

There was a real white jersey battle in the Giro Froome won between Lopez and Carapaz where neither were ever looking like a chance to win the race.

I would favour it being limited to first 3 Grand Tours which still would mean Pogacar being eligible this year at the Tour but does mean a precocious talent won’t have 5 years of potential eligibility.

With modern ways of measuring progress in training and races young riders are proving their quality to their teams at much younger ages and getting major leadership opportunities at young ages now.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Get Mediolanum to change KOM back to green then add a red jersey for something else like attackers/breakaways if the white jersey doesn't mean much.

Intergiro classification in the Giro d'Italia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Ricco']

Best U23 would be Almeida-Valter-Covi.

They are all born in 1998, so they were not eligible for U23 races if they were continental riders (this year is from 1999 onwards).

Based on current age ranks it would be Ponomar-Zana-Aleotti.

 

[Asero831]

scrap the young riders classification. It makes no sense. Just make it Over-35 classification and it will be more entertaining. Imagine Froome vs Nibali vs Valverde vs Porte vs Fugslang vs Thomas

 

[titan31]

Young jersey comps are great.

Think we take it for granted being on a cycling forum as we know what's what most of the time, but for more casual fans it is a valuable indicator of the people to watch out for in years to come.

Maybe bring it down a year, but I'd not modify too much based solely on recent trends

Course, and that's why it should stay, but I'd hope even casual fans would know who Bernal or Vlasov are and not need to see them in a white jersey. You can't even call them promising talents really at 25 anymore imo. In most cases, they've either made it or not by then.

 

[tobydawq]

I never cared for youth competitions in professional cycling. And now it doesn't make any sense at all.

 

[Cannavaro]

Get Mediolanum to change KOM back to green then add a red jersey for something else like attackers/breakaways if the white jersey doesn't mean much.

A breakaway jersey would be great. Something like Trofeo Fuga where they count the kilometers in breakaway groups. This would give incentives to attack on flat stages where a bunchsprint is certain. Even a doomed breakaway gets something to fight for and it could lead to situations where the break is attacking each other far away from the finish to deny their companions valuable kilometers.

 

[Cookster15]

U23 makes more sense. Yes, good idea!

 

[Samu Cuenca]

I don't think U23 makes sense as long as there's a U23 race calendar. By making it U24 some of the riders, who for different reasons develop at a slightly slower pace and/or have to wait a little longer to ride a GT (for GC or at all), would still have a chance to win it or at least wear it.

 

[Scarponi]

If you make it for Neo pros or the age too young you could theoretically have it never on tv as it could be dropped with the peleton still having 20 riders lol.

 

[Leinster]

I had a look at the winners lists of the young rider jersey for the Tour and Giro, and in both cases, it has tended to go to someone in the top 10 on gc. Sometimes you get a run of winners outside the top 10, and occasionally you get an overall winner who is eligible for it; it just happens to have been the overall winner in both races, in the past 2 years. But going back before that, the total number of white jersey winners of the Tour is 6, and of the Giro is 4. It’s not yet a trend.

In a couple years time, none of Bernal, Pogacar, Hart, Almeida etc will be eligible and there will be another group of youngsters competing for the white jerseys. Now, if those new guys manage to also be winning GC titles in 2025 along with their white jerseys, it will mean they are beating guys that we are currently assuming to be once-in-a-generation talents, and then I’ll probably agree that times have changed and we might consider changing the rules regarding a young rider comp. But as it stands, we have a “the plural of anecdote is not data” situation.


I’m much, much more concerned about the future of the KOM jersey, tbh.

 

[RedheadDane]

I think where it gets a bit silly to me, is when one rider is just so far ahead of the others that it stops being a competition at all. For example; I sometimes joke that Gaudu won the BYR competition in 2019, for riders not named Egan Bernal. And of course, for both of them they were up there (if being almost 24 minutes behind can be considered "up there"...) more or less by chance; Bernal because he was fighting for the GC, Gaudu because he was the last man for Pinot in the mountains.
Otoh, I'm totally fine with having two - or more - young riders engage in a strong battle for white, even if that battle also turns out to be a battle for pink/yellow/red.

 

[Armchair cyclist]

It is probably worth retaining it as a classification a matter of interest for those eligible, an early career goal, or a consolation for a brave effort, and something to be competed over in that regard. Whether it is worth signifying as one of the 4 most important classifications with a special jersey (and I believe UCI regs don't allow more than 4 of those) is more debatable.

Part of the problem is that it is not always very competitive: Jungels beat Seb Henao by 29 minutes in Giro 2016, Aru beat Formolo by 1 hour 51 the year before that! In the Tour, Bernal had 24 minutes over Gaudu (2019); Quintana had 15 minutes on Bardet (2015) and 13 on Talansky 2 years earlier; Contador had 17 minutes on Soler in 2007; and Menchov had 42 over Astarloza in 2003. They are not a matter of great tradition either: the Vuelta only started the classification in 2017 and the jersey 2 years later, and the Giro did without it happily from 1995-2006.

So no great loss if the jersey were to go: it is essentially a matter of how much prestige a race wants to give to another classification instead (sprints, home rider, combination (arrgghhh, no), combativity, whatever)