Our Individual Time Trial Rating (ITTR) is a metric we have developed to objectively rank riders based on their ability in time trials, which accounts for the level of competition faced. The metric is solely based on results.

What is taken account in the rating?

Only Individual Time Trial (ITT) results in the last 24 months are taking into account. The ITTR also overweights performances in the most recent races – an ITT that happened exactly 24 months ago has half the impact on the final rating compared to one that happened today.

Time Trials in the following races are included:

• all World Tour Races,
• all .Pro Races, with the exception of the the Asian .Pro races, which consistently feature a much weaker start-list; and
• select high level 2.1/1.1 races with high WorldTeam participation (Etoile de Bessèges, Tour de la Provence, O Gran Camiño, AlUla Tour, Chrono des Nations).

Additionally, ITT primarily ridden on road bikes, as well as ITT that exceed 30m of elevation gain per kilometre, are excluded from the ranking. Such mountainous ITT are largely decided by the climbing level as opposed to real ITT ability. Riders with less than four performances in the previously mentioned ITTs in the last two years are automatically assigned an ITTR of 0, as the sample size is too low.

How is the rating calculated?

For each ITT the rider has participated in he receives a score for his placement as follows:

• Finishers outside of the top 25 receive a score of 0;
• 25th place receives a score of 0,01;
• the winner receives a score of 1; and
• 2nd-24th receive a score between 0,01 and 1 based on their time gap.

For the calculation of 2nd-24th’s score, they receive a fraction of the 0.99 available score as determined by their time gap (as 25th already has a score of 0,01). For example, if 25th place finished on 60 seconds to first, a rider who finished on 30 seconds will receive a score of 0,505, being (1 – (30/60) * 0.99), while a rider who finished on 20s will receive a score of 0,67, being (1 – (20/60) *0.99).

The scores are then multiplied by the decay score, so that recent results are weighted higher and then an average is taken for every rider. This average is the Win Score (not to be confused with overall win percentage). A Win Score of 100% would therefore mean that the rider wins every ITT. The Win Score is the basis of the ITTR, but is still not entirely useful, as it does not account for strength of competition.

To make this adjustment, a strength of schedule is calculated for every rider, based on the Win Scores of competition he faced. Based on this strength of schedule, it is calculated how high the Win Score of that rider would be against average competition. This process is repeated once based on the competition adjusted Win Scores. The result of this is the final ITTR.

This means that the ITTR represents, how high of a Win Score a rider would have, were he to face average competition. Remco Evenepoel, for example, currently has the highest ITTR at 97,0, which means that against average competition he only loses, on average, 3% of the time that 25th place in each of these ITT lost to the winner.