Inquality between teams varies by skill
Inequality between cycling team did increase, mostly because of growing differences between WT and PCT teams. This is caused for the biggest part caused by the best climbers and GC-riders who went from PCT to WT teams and little less by the best hill specialist and time trialists. Within WT teams the main reason for growing differences are sprinters who are now more concentrated in the best WT teams.
The previous blog showed that inequality between professional cycling teams has risen. But mainly because of growing differences between teams from the World Tour versus Pro Continental teams. In this post I will look at inequality developments for different types of skills. I use the skill based rating system: the equivalent of the ELO-rating system in chess for different types of cycling skills. This is not a point based ranking system like the UCI World Ranking or CQ Ranking.
Figure 1 shows the ratio of the different skill ratings of the five best World Tour teams versus the mean of rating of all World Tour Teams. A higher ratio signifies more inequality and perfect equality is achieved with the low ratio of 1. The figure shows the inequality is highest in the general classification and time trial skills and lowest in flat race skills. Inequality has risen most in sprints, but the last years (after an initial drop) also in the general classification. In cobble stone races the teams have become more equal. Not surprising because cobble stone races were rare in the beginning in the World Tour and more have been added during the last years. The first years of the World Tour inequality dropped mostly, or didn’t change much. The last ten years the trend is quite uniform for most skills: except for time trials and cobble stone race the inequality has risen.
Figure 1: Skill inequality (ratio best 5 teams versus mean) between World Tour cycling teams 2007-2020
In figure 2 the development in inequality the last ten years is compared between all professional teams and between only World Tour teams. For most skills, inequality has risen much more when all teams are incorporated. That means that there has been a redistribution of some of the better riders of Pro Continental Teams to the World Tour. Especially the development for climbers and general classification riders (for a big part the same) stands out. Within the World Tour teams there is a tendency that more of these riders go to the best teams. But the redistribution of the better cyclists from PCT to World Tour is much clearer: inequality has risen with ten percent. For time trialists and hill specialist the same applies, but less pronounced.
Figure 2: Development in skill inequality 2010-2020. Comparing all teams versus only World Tour teams
The last figure shows the redistribution of the best hundred General Classification cyclists. In 2010 32 of the 100 best GC riders found occupation in Pro Continental Teams. In 2019 11 where left, and in 2020 this number has even dropped to 6. These riders have mostly gone to World Tour teams outside the top 5. The number in the best five teams has only risen from 32 till 39. This shows the redistribution of the better cyclists has for the biggest part been taken place from PCT to the lesser WT teams.
Figure 3: Number of top 100 GC-cyclists per type of team
