The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) have today announced that as part of the overhaul of the ranking system for men’s professional road cycling, the same points scale will be used to calculate the UCI World Ranking and the UCI WorldTour rankings from 2017 onwards.
Introduced in 2016, the UCI World Ranking – for individuals and nations – takes into account results achieved at all events on the UCI International Road Calendar (UCI WorldTour, UCI Continental Circuits, UCI World Championships, National and Continental Championships, Olympic Games and Continental Games) during the 52 previous weeks, according to a “rolling” system.
Peter Sagan and France are the winners of this first UCI World Ranking, for individuals and nations respectively, which concluded on October 23rd, 2016 – the end date of the 2016 season.
This ‘rolling’ system, similar to that of the ATP in tennis, is intended to better reflect the riders’ sporting performances, with the calculation not based not on a specific circuit but taking into account all their results over a full year.
All riders who score points in the relevant races are included in the UCI World Ranking, including riders who are not part of a UCI WorldTeam. Currently, 2,952 riders are classified.
Whereas in 2016 two distinct points scales coexisted for calculating the UCI World Ranking and the UCI WorldTour rankings respectively, the latter will adopt the UCI World Ranking points scale in 2017. This change will simplify the rankings, whilst also giving them greater readability.
The UCI WorldTour ranking by nation has been abandoned in favour of the UCI World Ranking by nation, which will crown the best nation on the basis of all results from the UCI International Road Calendar.
Another change is the way points are attributed to riders in order to calculate the UCI WorldTour ranking by team: in 2017, points scored by all riders in UCI WorldTeams will be taken into account; until now, only the first five riders scored points that counted towards the team ranking.
This change should encourage better performances from the whole team because results achieved by all a team’s riders will be taken into account.
The UCI WorldTour’s adoption of the UCI World Ranking points scale will allow the first 60 riders classified at the end of a race to be allocated points for the UCI WorldTour rankings, as opposed to 20 at present. A greater number of riders will therefore be able to score points, which will improve the spectacle, benefit teams in the team ranking and reward riders who previously received no points when finishing below 20th place.
