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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.
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.
The Climbs of Il Giro d’Italia 2023
Once again, the Giro d'Italia has presented a spectacular 2023 route with the hardest mountain stages in pro cycling. However recent history cautions cycling fans to lift their hopes too much, and it remains to be seen how many of them will actually take place. Next to the six mountain stages (three of them in the third week ), the parcours also features an extremely difficult mountain time trial to Monte Lussari and another two, mostly flat, time trials, which are 20km and 34km long respectively.
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.
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.
How Clean is Cycling? Analysing the Anti-Doping Fight
The sport of cycling has unfortunately been marred by doping throughout its history, both the acts itself and the speculation surrounding its prevalence in the peloton. But how does cycling stack up against other sports?
UAE and Jumbo fight for Top Spot whilst De Lie Boosts Lotto | UCI Ranking Analysis
The opening weekend has closed a very intense month of competition. Although some still think that the season starts at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the reality is that the entirety of February is one of the busiest months of competition. In this article, we will try to analyse the initial trends among the teams, separating those that will fight to win the 2023 UCI ranking and those that have started less strongly.
Top 10 Climbers for the 2023 Season
The 2022 cycling season was full of top level climbing performances with many records broken and new climbers bursting onto the scene. The list of Top 10 climbing performances of 2022 was dominated by Evenepoel and Vingegaard but will the same riders dominate the long ascents in WorldTour races in 2023?
Who Can Actually Lead-Out Mark Cavendish at Astana?
After the B&B Hotels team completely collapsed late in this off-season, Mark Cavendish was left with few options in his search for a new team. Unexpectedly, the Manx Missile has joined Astana Qazaqstan, a team which, up until a few weeks ago did not have have space left on its roster. However after sacking Miguel Angel Lopez a roster spot opened up as well as his presumedly handsome salary off their books for 2023 too. Good news for Cavendish' wallet as well as fans hoping to see him at the Tour de France, but how will he actually fare at Astana, a team which has historically not focussed on sprinting.
Young Riders To Watch In 2023
The peloton is getting younger and younger and there will be many talents who will shine in 2023. In this article we picked some of the best young talent that might impress with great performances this year.
Of the 10 riders in this list, all of them were born between 2000 and 2003. To be included they must have been outside of the UCI ranking Top 200 with no big results in WorldTour races before 2023 as well as some obvious supertalents like Cian Uijtdebroeks being excluded despite meeting those restrictions.