Raúl Banqueri

33 posts
I’m a Spanish data journalist who made a name for myself in the cycling world by publishing and analysing a secret ranking. I love making visualisations of complex data so that people can understand it quickly.
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UAE Hold off Jumbo while Uno-X and Total fight for Wildcards | UCI September Ranking Analysis

With less than a month of the season to go, several important battles in the UCI rankings are still open. UAE Team Emirates leads Jumbo-Visma by only 387 points in the race to win the annual ranking, after Jumbo's full podiums in La Vuelta and European Championships. In addition, Uno-X leads Total Energies by 281 points in the race for automatic invitations to next year's WorldTour classics, but they could be the wildcards for the entire WorldTour if the merger between Jumbo and QuickStep materialises. Also at stake are the quota places for the Paris Olympics, with very narrow margins between some of the top nations.
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UAE Pull Clear as Arkéa and Astana Fall Deep into relegation zone | UCI August Ranking Analysis

With only a month and a half to go until the end of the season, we can see clear trends in the rankings. UAE Emirates is destined to win the annual ranking thanks to its great competitiveness in almost every race on the calendar. In addition, there is a clear divide between the top 18 teams and the rest, which puts Arkéa and Astana in a delicate situation in just the first year of the triennium.
Louemans
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DSM plummet as Jumbo and UAE crush the Rest | UCI July Ranking Analysis

After an exciting month of July with both editions of the Tour de France, we return to analyse how it has influenced the men's UCI rankings. In keeping with the trend of the season, Jumbo and UAE have swept the board, but more modest teams like Jayco Alula, Ag2r and Cofidis have taken a big points haul from the Tour de France, which will give them peace of mind in the long term. It was the first Tour de France under the new scoring system, which handed out almost 30,000 UCI points, almost three times as many as in the previous season.
Louemans
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Winners and Losers of the Tour de France 2023 First Week

We have seen one of the most explosive and entertaining starts to a Tour de France in recent years, thanks to a difficult parcours and a brilliant general classification duel. Vingegaard and Pogačar are in a league of their own in the mountains, but each of the teams and riders have a lot of pressure to perform in the most important race of the year, even if it is not for the ultimate victory. In this article we will take a look at who is getting the most out of their riders at the once a year opportunity the Tour provides.
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UAE and Jumbo Battle for the Lead whilst Uno-X step forward | UCI June Ranking Analysis

This June we have had the races before the Tour de France with almost all the stars of the peloton racing that were not injured or recovering after the Giro d'Italia. UAE Team Emirates and Jumbo-Visma have continued to share most of the victories at WorldTour level and the fight to win the team ranking is still very tight. Below them, Uno-X have managed to overtake TotalEnergies and could get the automatic wildcards to the WorldTour classics next season for the first time in their history.
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The Giro Rewards Breakaways with Israel Securing 2024 Wildcards | UCI May Ranking Analysis

This Giro d'Italia has been the first Grand Tour after the change in the scoring system, which has increased the amount of UCI points distributed in Giro, Tour and Vuelta. While the podium was once again occupied by the three big teams (Jumbo, Ineos and UAE), other modest teams such as Jayco and Israel made the most of the race, benefitting from several successful breakaways. The points won by Israel are particularly important, as it gives them an almost unassailable lead of 2500 points over TotalEnergies in the fight for the 2024 WorldTour wildcards.
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EF Education-Easypost Prosper as Jayco-Alula Struggle Again | UCI April Ranking Analysis

The season of classics and one-week races has been dominated by a few players, as 19 out of 21 WorldTour races (90.5%) have been won by Jumbo, UAE, Alpecin or QuickStep. Despite this, teams such as Trek or EF Education-Easypost have surprised positively, while others such as Jayco-Alula and, above all, Astana continue to struggle to get results. In this article, we will analyse the teams' main sources of points and how their performance has changed compared to last season.
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Jumbo and UAE in a league of their Own whilst Astana Crumble | UCI March Ranking Analysis

The WorldTour calendar kicked off in earnest this March with all the stars of cycling appearing in races. This leaves a ranking that is much more representative of the strengths of the various teams compared to this time in February, with a few standout teams both positively and negatively. In addition, we will address the consequences of the new UCI regulations for Grand Tour wildcards, which give greater importance to sporting merit.