Rabobank report on cycling

iainf72

There were a few tweets flying about on this one yesterday and the wonderful Innerring blog has given a summary here

http://theinnerring.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... on-of.html

Don't be scared to have a look at the report - It's looks like a standard analysis paper you get out of a bank research dept so it's not very long.

Kléber

An interesting take. Marc Madiot said recently that a big factor behind the lack of a French winner in the Tour was the arrival of so many new nations. Once hidden behind the Iron Curtain, now so many riders can compete that whereas Sandy Casar might have been able to win the Tour (not this year, but in the past) if he was up against a few Belgians, Spaniards and Italians, now he's up against Australians, Americans, Kazakhs etc, the chances of success diminish.

An interesting way to score each nation in the report but like the UCI rankings, it reflects the efforts of one rider, eg Gesink and Vino are responsible for almost all the ranking points of their respective nations.

knedlicky

iainf72 wrote:

It's looks like a standard analysis paper you get out of a bank research dept

Also about equally (un)remarkable. I wonder why Rabobank decided to make the analysis.

Instead of looking backwards, perhaps they should have tried to see to where the future was going, e.g. by separately examining the young riders list and standings. Someone from Luxembourg leads that list but he’s that country’s only inclusion amongst 62 names, whereas Italy has 11 riders listed.
Or by looking at the U-23 and Junior standings (where Russia, Netherlands and Denmark are currently the most successful and therefore perhaps the most promising nations for future top riders).