Monday, September 26, 2005
Pete's World Cycling Rankings
The inaugural ProTour cycling season is coming to an end with just three one-day fall classics remaining on the first three weekends of October. Besides the official retirement of Lance Armstrong, the two big events since the Tour de France have been the re-crowning of a true Spanish champion with Roberto Heras's record-breaking fourth victory at the Vuelta, and the crowning of a new world champion in Belgian superstar Tom Boonen. These results, along with a few others during the last two months, have only mildly altered my rankings. Selecting a top-10 is pretty easy, but ordering this Top 10 is extremely difficult given the high level of event specialization that dominates the sport. What, after all, is one to make of Roberto Heras, who is so dominant on the roads of Spain in September but so pathetic in France in July? While the ProTour is a welcome idea, if its goal is to promote consistent year-long competition among all the top riders, then it is failing miserably.
Pete's World Cycling Rankings (September 26, 2005)
1. Danilo Di Luca (current Pro Tour standing = 1 / final 2004 UCI ranking = 27)
2. Tom Boonen (2/10)
3. Alexandre Vinokourov (5/38)
4. Ivan Basso (20/11)
5. Bobby Julich (7/30)
6. Alessandro Petacchi (9/9)
7. Paolo Salvodelli (18/404)
8. Roberto Heras (15/17)
9. Paolo Bettini ( 54/2)
10. Levi Leipheimer (6/87)
Honorable mention:
Jan Ullrich (3/15)
George Hincapie (8/48)
Davide Rebellin (10/6)
Denis Menchov (11/26)
Cadel Evans (14/87)
Santiago Botero (16/454)
Alejandro Valverde (19/4)
Gilberto Simoni (25/23)
Oscar Pereiro (28/92)
Damiano Cunego (35/1)
Robbie McEwen (89/16)
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A quick follow-up after Zurich: Congratulations to Danilo Di Luca for wrapping up the inaugural ProTour title. With strong performances in both the early- and late-season classics, and a phenomenal ride at the Giro, he's a very deserving champion. (And he's also the only guy to make the all-white leader's kit look good--an achievement in itself.) But something is fundamentally wrong with a season-long competition that gets clinched prematurely simply because most of the would-be rivals choose to pack it in early. There's no obvious solution given the specialization of today, but here are two ideas: First, turn the ProTour into strictly a team competition; there already is a teams classification, which would only benefit from having the ProTour spotlight to itself. Most of the riders don't seem to care about the crowning of a season-long series champion, so why should we fans? The second idea: alter the calendar so that the ProTour season ends in August with world championships that have been moved back to their original spot. Each new season would then begin in the fall--like football--with the Vuelta in September, followed by the fall classics and then a light winter calendar abroad (Tour Down Under, Dubai, Langkawi, the new Tour of California, etc.) before the season resumed in earnest with the spring classics. Thus, even if a rider built a sizable early lead in the fall, like Di Luca did this spring, we could be assured that all the big guns would be on hand at the season-ending climax trying to snatch the ProTour title away. The title chase could be especially dramatic at the TDF if significant ProTour points were awarded to the stage winners and to leaders in the other jersey competitions besides the Yellow/GC.
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