Press Release: SaxoBlank don't have enough points to remain as ProTeam!

Well, ok, maybe that's more of a rumour than a press release....

Here's how it works. Are we all sitting comfortably? Stand by to learn even more about the workings of the UCI.

Remember back in Schleckland, I told you all about the lovely ranking system? You know, teams wanting to get a ProTeam licence get a rating, and the top 15 are IN along with three of the next five. Or, in the case of Geox, not. (grrr, grrr, for full details, see Miss Fede's Blog entry which nicely covers pretty much everything that I would have said on the subject.)

They have to fulfill various criteria, about finance, ethics etc, but the main ranking is done on the number of UCI points that each team have.

Points are obtained by winning stages and races that are part of the UCI calendar.

Now there are two separate ways of applying these points to their rankings - bear with me, I'll try to make it clear.

Firstly there is the Top Team ranking for the current year, secondly is the eligibility ranking for the following year.

Top Team ranking: at the end of 2010, the UCI issues a "Team" ranking: they take the top five highest rider scores for each team and add them up.

SaxoBlank (back in the days when they were SexyBank) were number one ranked Team in 2010 with 1005 points.  Anyone like to guess how they obtained that score?

Unndy - 258
Frankie - 230
Fabian - 254
Jakob - 130
and Richie Porte 133

If, just out of interest, you add together Team Schlux members Unndy, Frankie, Fabian, Jakob and Jensi (62) you get 934. Which is pretty amazing, and explains why Team Schlux can be ranked as number one before ever putting shoe to pedal, he he he.

Eligibility ranking. The UCI look at the rosters submitted by the teams for 2011, and add up the scores of those riders to get the team's eligibility ranking.

Now, Lovely Lovely Boyfriend and I spent some considerable time last week debating this issue, and quite a bit of time trawling the UCI site, but we couldn't get any definitive statement as to how many riders' points contribute to the UCI eligibility - is it just the top 15 scores, or is it the entire team? This may be moot (for non-UK readers, a "moot point" is a point that turns out not to be particularly relevant or helpful. "Ve are Learnink all ze time" as they say) as it turns out that not everyone in a team will necessarily get points: I'll go into the reasons for that a bit further on.

As we all know, SaxoBlank had what you might call a bit of a reshuffle for 2011: they lost four of their top five points men, along with Jensi (62), Matti Breschel (16) and Alex Rasmussen (3). Their main gain was Contador (482).

I have gone through SaxoBlank's team roster for 2011 and have checked how many points each rider brings with him from 2010: these are the points that Bjarne put forward to the UCI to prove that he had a viable team.

482 - Contador
133 - Richie Porte
29  - JJ Haedo
21  - Gustav Larsson
16  - Chris Anker Sorenson
12  - Lucas Haedo
6    - Daniel Garcia
1   - Jaroslaw Marycz (Leelu, don't even ask me to pronounce that one...)

Total: 700 eligibility points. 681 Team ranking points.
Team Schlux have 1,070 eligibility points, 934 Team ranking points.

For comparison, Euskaltel (cries of "Carrots! Carrots! Danger! Get out of the way! Aargh!") score up as follows:

Sammy Sanchez - 301
Igor Anton - 132 ("Hooray!") (He was my Underdog favourite last season)
Benay Intxcausti - 82 (how the HELL do you pronounce that??)
Mikel Nieve - 72
Koldo Fernandez - 8
Aito Galson - 7
Romain Sicard - 4
Ruben Perez - 4
Pablo Urtasun - 4
Egoi Martinez - 1

Total: 615 eligibility points. 595 Team ranking points, and they were the 13th ranked Team.

Here's the point:

If Contador is banned from racing, then not only does he lose all that money (see last post) but his team lose his points: so SaxoBlank will have just 218 eligibility points, and 199 Team ranking points.

Hence the title: looking at these figures, if Contador is banned, then SaxoBlank lose his points and are no longer anywhere near the top of the rankings: in fact, on paper, they might even be so low that they don't qualify as being in the top 15.

Scary stuff, huh?

Of course, there's more to it than that: Saxo already have a licence, so on the one hand their loss of points shouldn't make a difference.

On the other hand the UCI Press Release of last November includes the phrase "first division teams with continuing licences which meet the required sporting, ... criteria"  so you could say that if Saxo no longer have the points, they no longer meet the sporting criterion. Mind you, as Conti was "done" before the applications went in - I think 1st October was the deadline - then his points position should have been queried at that stage?

On the third hand ("the gripping hand") has a team ever lost it's status part-way through the season?

On the fourth hand (now we're getting kinky) does a doping rider lose all of his points for the whole year, or just for the race in which he was caught? I assume it's the former, otherwise what happens to riders caught doping while training? So for the purposes of this discussion, I think we have to assume that Contador will lose all his points for 2010. There is no doubt some reference to this situation in the UCI rules but frankly, after an hour or two of reading them I lose the will to live, so I am happy to be corrected on that point if anyone knows the answer, and can provide their source. The TdF has to account for at least half of Alberto's points, so even if Saxo only ("only!") lose his TdF points, it is going to make a big hole in their ranking situation.

Do we have an opinion, one way or the other? Personally I'd hate to see SaxoBlank be dismissed from the ProTeam listing, not least because they've had enough problems this year, but also because Bjarne Riis has, despite all the rude things we sometimes say about him, held a team together, held a sponsorship deal together, and has authorised a moderately pretty kit.

But then, you have to say, would this make room for Geox?

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There is a whole lot more to write about how this business of points is going to change team tactics, but this post is already so long that I've decided to split it off into a new post.