So Little Time, So Many Races To Win

by ursula on Dec 8, 2008 8:16 PM EST Comment 6 comments

Stats_medium

I do have a life. Honest. But I also have more numbers to drop on you cause if I don't I'll just keep thinking about them so it makes more sense for YOU to think about them now.

Anyway, while figuring out the average ages of the winners of the big bike races I also looked at just this past year in comparison. Its not as definitive but it is interesting. Specifically what I did was look at the VDS in two ways:

I computed the average ages of the a) top VDS points earners and 2) the average ages of the top ten places in all of the VDS races just to see if anything really odd came out. The results are on the flip.

VDS Top Point Winners' Average Ages

The top 16: 29.19

The top 26: 28.23

The top 42: 28.60

The top 16 all scored above 1000 VDS points last year. The top 26, over 750 points, and the top 42, over 500 points. In other words these were the top riders last year, either the leaders of their teams, or they were allowed to test themselves in less important races and did well (Kreuziger fro example).

The age with the most riders was (not surprisingly) 28 with 6 and the numbers fall off the further you get away from 28. The oldest rider is Tin Tin (37) with McEwen (36), Leipheimer (35), and Bruseghin (34) joining him in making up the Get Off My Lawn! Geezer Quartet.

On the other end Kreuziger and Gesink are the two youngest at 22 with Cavendish, Van Avermaet, and Andy Schleck being next at 23.

Top Ten in Each VDS Race Averages

So before I go on, I must say how different this list of riders is from the list just above of the top VDS point earners. For instance Cavendish is 19th highest VDS point earner last year but if you look for him in the top 10 of any VDS race well, good luck buddy! He did win Scheldeprijs, yes, but he makes no top ten list of ant other race. Similar dissing happens to most of the sprinters not named Tom Boonen or Robbie McEwen in fact as their points are made on individual stages and points competitions and prologues. So with that in mind,

The Top Ten VDS Average Age : 28.81

Some top ten subtotals:

Grand Tours- 29.87

Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, Vuelta a Espana

via i.eurosport.fr

Monuments- 29.38

MSR, Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, LBL, Lombardia

via www.rapha.cc

Top Stage races- 28.08

Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico, Pais Vasco, Suisse, Deutchland, Catalunya, Dauphine

Ardennes- 28.93

Amstel, Fleche Wallonne, LBL

via farm1.static.flickr.com

Non-Monument Classics- 28.57

Olympics RR & TT, San Sebastian, E3, GP Plouay, Het Volk, Gent-Wevelgem, Worlds RR & TT, Paris-Tours

via en.epochtimes.com

Best of the Rest- 28.76

Vattenfalls, DDP, Brabantse Pijl, Criterium International, Emilia, Dwaars door Vlaanderen, KBK, Scheldepris

via www.cyclingweekly.co.uk

Cobbles- 29.41

Het Volk, Brabantse Pijl, Gent-Wevelgem, E3, DDP, Scheldepris, Dwaars door Vlaanderen, KBK, Flanders, Paris-Roubaix

via www.pedalmag.com

"Oldest" race- Dwaars door Vlaanderen at 31.90 closely followed by San Sebastian at 31.80.

"Youngest" race- GP Plouay at 26.40 followed by Suisse Tour at 26.60 and Deutchland Tour at 26.90

So there's my available info. Sometime I'd like to track the VDS races back 10 years to see how they change and to get a better sample size. Are the Grand Tours normally the oldest set? And are the cobbles just for the geezer set- really old guys like Drew and Chris? Are the week long stage races normally attracting a younger crowd? We'll find out in the next installment....

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Comments

Wow. Fancy. Representative pictures added for visual emphasis.

Intersting information as well. I have nothing else to add except GO GEORGE. I’m a fan what can I say?

by ZoeRochelle on Dec 8, 2008 10:30 PM EST reply actions

S'okay!

There’s many. many. MANY worse things to do in this world then adding GO GEORGE.

"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it."- H. L. Mencken

by ursula on Dec 8, 2008 11:57 PM EST up reply actions

Seems to me

that oddly enough, the average age’s of most clusters that you have looked at tend to be pretty much the same as the average age of the pro peleton. If I recall from one of the other posts, the average age is 28ish. I’m too lazy too look it up. But if that’s the case, then it’s simply a case of frequency bias (i made up that term, but you get the idea). There are more 28 year old winners because there are more 28 year olds. I think the general demographics was discussed previously. You clearly showed in one of your previous posts that the average age of the winners of the biggies was heading north over time. But does this simply reflect an increase in the mean age of cyclists in general?

Regarding your data here. Is there an age bias at the top end of the standings? I don’t feel like there is. We are looking at an age range of say 15 yrs.

The top 16: 29.19
The top 26: 28.23
The top 42: 28.60

So when you ‘double’, or even ‘triple’ the sample size the mean stays pretty much glued to the mean of the entire population. This indicate to me (without doing any calculations) that as a whole, the VDS races are ‘randomly’ sampling (age wise) from the population.

I’m not sure if I actually made a point or not. But i’m tired…so I press post.

by Hons on Dec 8, 2008 10:48 PM EST reply actions

No, I think you are right.

I didn’t find anything really new here; I just looked at the available info from a different angle. Your next to the last sentence though,

So when you ‘double’, or even ‘triple’ the sample size the mean stays pretty much glued to the mean of the entire population. This indicate to me (without doing any calculations) that as a whole, the VDS races are ‘randomly’ sampling (age wise) from the population.

I don’t feel comfortable with yet. I do see some movement from thje top 16 to the top 26 and top 42. Is it enough to mean something? I don’t know yet.

In both this post and the last one I was looking at basically team leaders- especially this one. I don’t look at how said team leaders get selected and thus supported by their teams. One thing my last post showed a little, but not enough to say anything definitive about, was that there are fewer really young stars these days compared to 50 years ago and more. Eventually I’d like to get a nailed down explanation about that.

"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it."- H. L. Mencken

by ursula on Dec 9, 2008 12:06 AM EST up reply actions

Perhaps

in the second part of your post (top 10 per VDS race) you are looking more at team leaders. But the overall stat is not. Even if we are talking about the entire peleton. With 20 teams, you are looking at, on average, the top 2 cyclist per team. And from the 387 registered VDS racers…that is a whopping 10.6%. With a sample that size I would suggest that you are getting more of a overall population sample, rather than the specific subset that you are interested in. Also, if I recall correctly, last year the scoring system was much more liberal, which would lead to a greater # of riders scoring highly with out necessarily being leaders.

From your last post it does look like there is an increasing age of GT winners. Since you didn’t show the monuments, I can’t generalize. But since the two older tour (TdF and giro) are nestled comfortably in the middle of the list of races, I will. The winners of the biggest races do seem to be getting older.

But this could be due to two different underlying reasons:
1) The races are being won by a progressively older sample of the peleton
2) The peleton as a population is progressively getting older.

Your the overall VDS stats (top 16/26/42) seems to support the later. Well, at least that overall last season there wasn’t much of a skew towards the older folks.

However, I think that your breakdown into GT vs week long races will be interesting. It does seem that the an older segment of the peleton is winning the GT’s vs the WL’s. I was about to say something about the other races, but then I realized that you have some races double listed for this post.

…I think I just ran out of steam. Thanks again for compiling all this. As you can see, when the mood strikes me, I can’t get enough of this stuff. And apparently it strikes way past my bedtime.

by Hons on Dec 9, 2008 2:14 AM EST up reply actions