Does it make sense to continue using the current guideline for the youth classification?
The process of data analysis involves collecting, inspecting and modeling a data set with the intention of confirming or rejecting a possible previous intuition, learning non-stop along the way. It is also used to give an answer to a question related to a specific topic, like in this case.
This time, it all started with the feeling that nowadays in professional cycling there are a lot of young cyclists that are more successful even than those riders with more experience. This set of riders have usually a particular classification for them, the youth classification. Like the winner of the general classification (GC in order to shorten it), the best young rider gets a distinctive jersey, generally white, and although there is not a clear rule about the inclusion criteria, usually only those riders under 25 years on January 1st of each season are taken into account. To simplify things, these cyclists will be labeled as under-26.
Does it make sense to continue using the current guideline for the youth classification?
On several occasions this season the winner of the youth classification has also won the general classification, which can lead to a downgrading of the classification focused on the theoretical young riders. If a rider is leading at the same time both classifications, the order of priority places the GC before the youth classification, so the rider wearing the white jersey is sometimes not the one leading that particular classification, which may harm its reputation. This is why one decided to graphically show the final GC result of the rider that won the white jersey in World Tour stage races.
The uptrend indicates that the winner of the youth classification finishes each time closer to the winner of the GC, although the slope is not clearly upwards. One cannot say that this is something only happening these last couple of seasons because you can see that it started happening years ago.
It is important to take into account that not all World Tour races have a specific classification for young riders. For example, in 2016 only 6 2.UWT events awarded the best rider under-26, a number that has increased until the 14 races that in 2019 had a youth classification.
Since 2011 (the year when the present calendar of top-level races was launched), the rider who won the prize as the best young rider finished, on average, in the 5.28th position in the general classification. Obviously, you won’t see a decimal number in the results sheet.
Focusing on the last couple of seasons, the average decreases to 4.15, so seeing an under-26 finishing in the podium of a GC is something increasingly common. In only one of the 14 2.UWT races with a youth classification this year, the winner of the white jersey finished outside the top 10.
There are some 2.UWT races that, when calculating the average age (with round numbers) of the final podium members, are located below the current age-limit. This year 5 stage races had a podium with an average age under 26 years old, something that had never happened before. Furthermore, more than a third of the riders finishing in the top five of a World Tour stage race in 2019 were under 26.
That’s not all. On six occasions this season the best young rider was also the first in the GC. Bernal (x3), Lopez, Pogacar and Mas got the double prize, and most of them will be able to ratify their wins next season. In fact, if the inclusion criteria doesn’t change (that is, the ‘under 26 years old on January 1st’ remains the same), Bernal, who is already the rider with more white jerseys since the start of the World Tour calendar, can extend his record during the next three seasons, because the Colombian was born on January 13th, 1997. That means that the wonderkind Evenepoel will still be considered young in 2025!
It is not surprising then that someone may finish his under 26 stage with more than 10 wins in the youth classification, something very difficult to happen a few years back. The average age among top-level teams (labeled as WorldTeams by the UCI) decreases every year and more riders enter the fight to be the best young rider in World Tour races. With the provisional data for the upcoming 2020 season, 28.93% of the riders will be eligible for the youth classification because they will be under 26. If instead, the age bar was two years lower, 14.18% of the members of the teams would still be ‘young’, which some may consider as a fairer proportion.
If the NBA rewards the player that had his best first season, and the English football Premier League gives an award to the best player aged 23 or under, why raising the age limit of these prizes to 26 years when talking about cycling?
The UCI itself integrates the under-23 events in the World Ranking, which denotes that according to them these races disputed by truly young riders can be comparable to elite races. Why not set the age limit in 23 years and give presence to cyclists that go unnoticed otherwise? In the UCI rules and regulations there is not a guideline that says what riders are considered for the youth classification, so any race organizer should be free to set the bar lower.
This analysis has the goal of improving the decision-making of anybody involved in this topic, with the help of data visualization techniques to communicate key insights contained in the data. The data collection has been manually done, with isolated consultations to the main data sources available online.
