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The pro-season is about to start in a few weeks. So where are the top riders starting their season? In this overview you have a dynamic overview of the first race of the top-100 riders from the PCS ranking (as far as race programs are available).

Table 1. First race of the season for top-20 PCS ranking (*programs known on January 19th)

First race

A lot of the top-100 riders start their season in February or March. Tadej Pogacar starts on February 20th in the UAE Tour, which is the 51st day of the year. The average day a rider from the top-100 starts his season in 2022 is 78.8, or March 21st. This number will change significantly as we don't have complete rider programs yet. We tabelized the number also for historical seasons since 2000. This shows a significant trend. If we compare the 3-year average from 2000-2002 (44.5) to that of 2017-2019 (32.4) we can conclude that top riders started their season on average 12 days earlier. In covid season 2020 and 2021 the number spiked due to cancelled races.

Table 2. Average first day of the season for top-100 riders (as of January 19th)

Races come and go over the years. Especially in the first months of the season there are new races added to the calendar, for example the UAE tour. In the following table we charted the country per season with the highest number of top-100 riders making their season start.

Table 3. Country with highest number of top-100 riders making their season start

Between 2002 and 2020 Spain was the most preferred country. Last season France took over with a high number of 62 riders starting their first race.

Table 4. Country with 2nd highest number of top-100 riders making their season start