Another annual end-of-year project is reviewing how our PdC World Rankings performed, compared to some of the other markers. Personally, I enjoy this quite a bit. For starters, it gives me an opportunity to remind people that the UCI's version is a pale imitation of what a world ranking should be. By utilizing only the World Tour schedule of just 27 races (the PdC World Calendar has 27 races before April Fool's Day), the UCI's ranking system resembles less an assessment of the year's accomplishments than some sort of airline-style VIP club, where if you use their services over anyone else's you get a comfy chair and the odd free drink. I know, that's not a bad thing... but it doesn't make you an accomplished globetrotter.

Like an airline VIP club, the World Tour is nonetheless a pretty OK reflection of how the elite guys stack up against each other. Against the collective better judgment and the efforts of ASO, the UCI has positioned itself as the gate agent for the Tour de France. Make them happy and you get moved into First Class. Make them mad and... well, you might get past them regardless, but it won't be easy or pleasant. The result, of course, is that everyone would rather score UCI points and simplify their Tour entry prospects, so the World Tour races tend to draw the best of the best.

But continuing with this nearly deceased metaphor, those on the outside looking in get thoroughly jobbed. To the flip!

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As you know, I've tinkered with trying to promote certain statistics as a way of analyzing performance, besides the wins and points stuff that, while telling, isn't overly precise or descriptive. And while there's a lot you can't do crunching numbers for race placings, I'm pretty sold on sprinters' stats. So, once more to the well.

This edition analyzes the Big Four, as we head into what looks like an extremely competitive year for grand tour stage sprints. Over the last two years it's become apparent that Mark Cavendish, Tyler Farrar and Andre Greipel have been the guys to beat in the bunch gallops, with Alessandro Petacchi more sporadically involved, but occasionally brilliant. The list of guys who can win from the bunch is much longer, but for the sake of containing this exercise, these four will do. A couple changes from past analyses: first, I'm only looking at stage race stage sprints. Classics, even the flat ones, are too different and don't do justice to the numbers. Secondly, Im separating out grand tours from everything else. Whether that's useful, we'll see. And finally, I've switched from "Top 5 %" to "Top 3 %" -- meaning, percent of times the rider finishes in the top three -- not only because 3=podium but because the top five numbers didn't differ much from the top ten. With these elite guys, top five is almost a given. Top three... you start to see some separation.

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It's late August; the transfer silly season is in full swing. But still the teams have their agendas, what they want to accomplish this year-and there's still some major items to tick off: the Vuelta, Worlds, and Lombardia. Paris-Tours, Emilia, and a whole bunch of smaller regionally focused races.  So let's look at the major teams and see how they've done so far and what they need to do in order for them to feel satisfied once that god-awful month of November reaches out and squeezes all our hopes and dreams into a pulp. 

A bit of explanation on how I am organizing things below. With each team I start off with four numbers (yea numbers!). 

- What the team earned in 2008 (using VDS points, naturally) along with team ranking in parenthesis.

- What the team earned in 2009, along with team ranking in parenthesis. So far so simple, right?

- What this year's riders scored last year. See the difference between this and what the team did in 2009? Just to be clear, take HTC-Columbia. Last year's team had EBH, Lofkvist, etc. This year's team is slightly different. It has the Velits' brothers, Teejay, etc. so the numbers in this third line includes these guys and not the Eddy Bo/Lofkvist group who are in the second line. I am including this number to see if with last winter's transfers has the team at least earned as many points as the individual riders on the team did last year. 

- The last number is what the team has earned this year to date-after Ouest-Plouay and stage 5 of Eneco, and their ranking for this year so far.

Okay, that was confusing I am sure. Let's get on with the teams staring with the best team of 2010:

1) Saxo Bank

-2008 points: 9050 (1)

-2009 points: 8640 (2) 

-What the 2010 riders earned in 2009: 6119

-Points earned so far in 2010: 6488 (1) 

Work to do: Just follow through. Cancellara should score at the Worlds and the Vuelta TT's. The big question is what the Schlecks, especially Frank, will do at the Vuelta. They haven;t yet shown the ability to focus over two Grand Tours in a row but perhaps Frank's early injury on the Tour will change that. Overall this team is in a transition year even without the Schlecks , etc., leaving, which is reflected in the several very young riders on the team. Obviously that will continue next year but IMO already this year is a success.  I could see them getting up around 8000 points for the year.

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Today seems like a good time to check in on one of our major initiatives for the 2010 cycling season -- our Podium Cafe World Rankings! Note, these rankings and numbers are identical to the data we use to calculate the VDS rankings, on the theory that our little game is a pretty good reflection of reality. But the bigger point here is that we have tried to come up with a definitive ranking system, for a sport that doesn't really have one. The final word on this project will have to wait til October, but let's take a peek in on our rankings and see how they stack up against some of the other alternative methodologies. Top ten only:

This isn't the full list of rankings, no doubt, and if you know of a better one, feel free to do more comparisons. But I've been a CQ fan for a while, and the UCI is the governing body of the sport. I added Cycling Fever because I really like their work.  So what do we see?

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Time to take a minute to see how our favorite teams are doing this year. And what better way to do this than with numbers!

The table below has two columns:

1) The left hand column is where the teams ranked after the first third of the season-after the Frankfurt race. At that point the spring's one day races were done.

2) The right hand column is where they rank now, after the middle of the season's big stage races: Romandie-Giro-Dauphine-Suisse-Tour with a little Dunkerque, California,  and Austria thrown in for fun. Plus National Championships. Can't forget those!

Like always I break the table into a couple parts because it's so freakin' long. 76 teams long. The table you see below is for the Big teams, with some random commentary to follow on the break. Then we get the Little team table with no commentary at all. Kinda reminds me of Thanksgiving dinners when the whole extended family got together and no table was big enough for all of us so the kids sat at the little table. Anyways, to the rankings!

Table 1-The Parents Table

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Big upheaval in the ranks, what with Liquigas' Giro win and Valverde's banning. Here are the Rankings from the one-third poll. Below I give the three main ranking systems and then I average them to get a composite. Some random comments on the jump.

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Back when Contador announced his change of plans for the spring (riding Criterium, Castilla y Leon, La Fleche, and LBL instead of Catalunya and Pais Vasco) I wondered what that would do with his VDS chances. I own Bert so I had a vested interest in him making max VDS points since some bozo priced him so damn high. Time has passed, now I know what happened and so will you in a minute as below I will list the most expensive VDS riders this year and how they are doing at this point of the year as opposed to last year at this time. Plus I'll throw in a bit of commentary on who's in deep ca ca and who's looking to outperform last year.

One point about comparing the years, or actually two: 

1) Yeah we have more races this year but I think for the expensive riders, these extra races will only make a very minor difference in their point totals since they rarely ride them and they don't give many points.

2) Last year Catalunya happened later than now but I will still include it in my comparisons.

Okay on to the list!

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Tomorrow's Race Across Flanders kicks off the High Holidays of Flemish Cycling, a/k/a Vlaamse Wielerweek: ten days, nine stages around Flanders -- mostly West Flanders, and with all the cobbles and crosswinds that entails.

In case you hadn't noticed, the races themselves actually fall mainly into two categories: jaunts around the Flemish Ardennes, and flatter, more coastal/western routes. [Also, FYI, Scheldeprijs is East Flanders; Brabantse Pijl in Brabant.] The beauty of the Tour of Flanders is that it fulfills one of the original "tour" functions, uniting the region it purports to Tour with a comprehensive jaunt -- in this case, de Ronde heading west out of Bruges to pay homage to the coast before its date with bumpy destiny. Anyway, Stages 2-4 of Driedaagse de Panne and Gent-Wevelgem make up the western category, while the DDV falls squarely in the Ardennes category, along with the E3 Prijs Vlaanderen, the first stage of Driedaagse de Panne, and the latter half of De Ronde, where all of the hard racing takes place. You could throw the Omloop in the same category if you wished -- its popularity has more than a little to do with previewing Vlaamse Wielerweek.

So... how do the Ardennes races stack up against one another? Naturally the Tour of Flanders is the gold standard and everything else is just trying to do a respectable impression. First, some resources:

• Ronde van Vlaanderen official list of all the hellingen in Flanders -- a/k/a the Bible.
• My own spreadsheet showing the climbs and where they appear in the four applicable races.

Exactly how hard each race is cannot be boiled down to numbers, at least not in advance. Maybe you could check Tom Boonen's wattage data afterward, but that would be a function of the course, the weather, and how hard the race is run. Of these variables, we only know the course. But enough of my disclaimers... to the numbers!

Tour of Flanders

• Total meters climbed: 13,555 (N.b., these are HORIZONTAL, not vertical)
• Climbs averaging 7+%: 6
• Cobbled climbs: 10
• Total rated climbs: 15

The choice of 7+% is a bit arbitrary, but if you pick almost any number you should get a sense of where the steep stuff is. A more scientific study might include figuring out what the average gradient is for all 13,555 meters. Maybe over at Podium Cafe Premium. Anyway, the remaining Ardennes races look like this:

The only thing that really stands out is the amount of climbing in E3, a full 6km more than Dwars and the Omloop and even 3km more than de Ronde. A week before the big show, this is a pretty serious effort, and any rider thinking he needs more hard ascents in his legs should seriously look at going to E3 instead of Gent-Wevelgem.

Otherwise, each of the Ronde dress rehearsals offers up a nice menu of hard-to-very-hard climbs, a flavor of de Ronde, more than enough cobbles to get the point, and a different end point (respectively: Waregem, Harelbeke, Oudenaarde and Gent) to give each race something of a unique identity. The most important point is that they all cross paths with de Ronde, and everything in Flanders between now and April 4th is oriented toward that moment.

Update! Speaking of hellingen, over at Sporza they are discussing a Flemish author who has rated the climbs, according to six criteria: length, avg grade, max grade, state of the road, historical interest and a "Mont Ventoux factor", which I am at a loss to describe. The top three?

1. Kemmelberg
2. Muur van Geraardsbergen/Kappelmuur
3. Kluisberg (combining both climbs)