Season Breakdown: The 2022 street season is within the bag and so Spencer Martin has taken an in depth have a look at the group performances. What does the UCI Staff level rankings inform about which outfits over, and below, achieved in the course of the 2022 season?
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Tadej Pogačar didn’t win the Tour – however was his greatest season but
With the latest operating of Il Lombardia marking the tip of the 2022 WorldTour racing calendar, I’ve been taking a while to replicate on the traits we noticed emerge up to now season and plan out the BTP low season content material. To kick off this reflection and re-examination, I needed to step again and take inventory of how every group stacked up when it comes to the UCI level rankings.
Jumbo-Visma prime group, however largely with out Primoz Roglič
Under are the highest 23 groups (18 1st division + 4 PT) so as of the UCI factors they gained from their prime 10 point-scoring riders all through the 2022 season (aka the UCI level rankings).
2022 Season High 23 Staff UCI Level Rankings
As we are able to see, Jumbo-Visma takes the highest spot within the UCI rankings for the second time in three seasons, with former powerhouse, Fast-Step, falling all the way in which all the way down to sixth place.
And maybe even extra shocking, Jumbo-Visma additionally ranks as the highest group in wins (tied with UAE), whereas Fast-Step fails to win the season-long ‘win title’ for the primary time in over ten years.
The primary tome Fast-Step wasn’t on on the highest step – Even with Evenepoel
2022 Wins, Podiums & High Tens per WorldTour Groups
And under we are able to see how my pre-season BTP NET projection mannequin stacked up towards the post-season UCI Staff Level Rankings.
2022 Staff BTP NET Projections In comparison with Their Closing UCI Level WorldTour Rating Positions:
1) Staff Jumbo-Visma (1)
2) UAE Staff Emirates (2)
3) INEOS Grenadiers (3)
4) Fast-Step Alpha Vinyl (6)
5) Bahrain – Victorious (8)
6) BORA – hansgrohe (4)
7) Trek – Segafredo (11)
8) EF Schooling – EasyPost (15)
9) Groupama – FDJ (7)
10) Cofidis, Options Crédits (9)
11) Movistar Staff (10)
12) AG2R Citroën Staff (13)
13) Israel – Premier Tech (16)
14) Staff BikeExchange (14)
15) Intermarché Wanty Gobert (5)
16) Astana Qazaqstan (18)
17) Lotto Soudal (12)
18) Staff DSM (17)
I’ll dive into group efficiency in additional element once I do my weighted BTP NET Rankings for the approaching season, however under are a number of fast takeaways from these preliminary outcomes.
Vingegaard and Van Aert didn’t disappoint
Preliminary Takeaways:
1) Jumbo-Visma is formally biking’s new superteam
- After a multi-year turnaround venture, the Dutch group is now dwelling to a few of the sport’s greatest riders (Wout van Aert, Primoz Roglic and Jonas Vingegaard) and can exit the 2022 season with a Tour de France general title together with probably the most UCI factors and wins.
- This is among the most troublesome achievements within the sport because the single-minded give attention to successful an general title on the grand tour often means a group can’t compile sufficient wins and UCI factors to steer the WorldTour.
- They’ll now head into the 2023 season because the undisputed greatest group within the sport and could have large expectations on their shoulders at almost each race the place they take the beginning line.
Alaphilippe was lacking from Fast-Step for a lot of the season
2) Fast-Step fails to take the ‘win title’ for the primary time since 2012
- Up till 2022, the Belgian group eschewed stage race outcomes so as to rack up wins in one-day races and particular person phases.
- Whereas 2022 was disappointing within the respect that the group did not take the win title for the primary time since 2012 and produced their worst leads to the cobbled classics because the founding of the group in 2003, it was a large success in they gained their first-ever grand tour (Vuelta a España) and unearthed the game’s subsequent huge grand tour star in Remco Evenepoel.
- Assuming the group can dangle onto Evenepoel past 2022 (he’s being pursued by bigger-budgeted groups like Ineos), it will likely be attention-grabbing to see how the group units its monetary and sporting priorities going ahead.
- Curiously, whereas their 4th place end within the UCI Factors rankings is technically disappointing, it’s the first time their pre-season BTP NET rankings have roughly aligned with their precise end, which displays that their previous outcomes have been extra a results of the group’s construction producing an overachieving squad than pure expertise.
UAE Staff Emirates – Not all about Pogačar
3) UAE did not defend its Tour de France, and struggled to appear like a cohesive group at occasions, however produced their greatest season ever
- Tadej Pogačar’s UAE group did not win the Tour de France for the primary time since 2020, however their 2021 low season spending spree appeared to repay as they tied for first within the win title and have been the one group inside 2,000 factors of Jumbo-Visma within the UCI factors race.
- This reveals us that whereas they appeared to battle to pick the appropriate Tour de France lineup to help Pogačar and to race as a cohesive unit within the races the place their celebrity wasn’t current, they’ll head into the low season viewing 2022 as a profitable marketing campaign and that they might doubtlessly emerge as the game’s most dominant group in future years if they’ll discover the appropriate racing method to unlock the immense quantity of particular person expertise on the group.
A great yr for the French
4) The French groups had a surprisingly robust yr
- After years of struggling to keep up tempo with their competitors on this planet of hyper-advanced coaching, French groups produced a powerful 2022, touchdown 5 groups within the prime 20 and staving off relegation, which allowed them to maintain 4 groups within the 18-team WorldTour.
Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert – ‘the darling of 2022’
5) Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert punched effectively above its weight
- If Alpecin was the underfunded overachiever of the 2021 season, Intermarché, who completed second-to-last within the 2021 WorldTour rankings, is the darling of 2022.
- With a particularly considerate team-building and in-race technique, the underdog Belgian group was capable of flip an 18th-place end in 2021 into a surprisingly excessive Fifth-place end in 2022.
- Most spectacular is the hole between their BTP NET projection of fifteenth and Fifth place end, which reveals that they actually maximized the expertise of their group.
Alpecin-Deceuninck into the WorldTour for 2023
6) DSM, EF, and Astana are in determined want of a turnaround in 2023
- Whereas Intermarché was flying excessive, three better-funded WorldTour rivals (DSM, EF, and Astana) suffered by completely terrible seasons the place factors, wins, podiums and prime tens have been extraordinarily onerous to come back by.
- Whereas Astana and DSM struggled primarily because of weak rosters, EF’s extraordinarily giant delta between their BTP NET projected end (eighth), and their precise end (18th), reveals that their issues have been extra execution than expertise associated. I count on the American group’s low season will embody a big quantity of efficiency fact-finding to determine how this might have occurred.
- Placing simply how poor the seasons of this trio have been into perspective, whereas DSM solely trailed AG2R by a single win, they completed over 2,000 UCI factors behind the French group, which had a reasonably disappointing season itself.
DSM had their moments, however…
Subsequent week I will likely be breaking down the highest 20 within the UCI level rider rankings earlier than moving into the standard BTP low season content material of digging deeper into group outcomes and traits from the 2022 seasons in additional depth, restarting the Weekly Switch Evaluation, and trying to venture 2023 performances with my BTP NET sequence after the rosters are set in January. An essential be aware is that if you’d like entry to all of those posts, you must be a paying BTP subscriber.
The game’s subsequent huge Grand Tour star – Remco Evenepoel
# Spencer Martin is the writer of the cycling-analysis e-newsletter Past the Peloton that breaks down the nuances of every race and solutions huge image questions surrounding group and rider efficiency. Enroll now to get full entry to all of the out there content material and race breakdowns. #
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