Tadej Pogačar has built commanding leads in the Road Code Ranking by winning the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France (Getty Images)
The Road Code Ranking is a unique way of classifying the best-performing riders over a cycling season, based on the quality of the start list and the race. Alongside the overall ranking, there are six sub-rankings to determine who is the best sprinter, climber, time-triallist, one-day rider, stage racer and Grand Tour rider.
Tadej Pogačar, the first man to achieve the Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double since 1998, has substantially added to his commanding lead in the Road Code Ranking and two of its sub-categories.
The UAE Team Emirates rider won the Tour at the weekend with three successive stage victories, taking his win tally at the race to six, the same amount he achieved at May’s Giro d’Italia.
As a result of his dominance, he accrued 2,303 points in the final week of racing, meaning that he now has 9,119 season points, a lead of almost 4,000 to Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) in second. Pogačar earned 1,300 points for winning the yellow jersey, slightly more than what he was awarded for triumphing in the Giro because the Tour had a higher-quality field.
Evenepoel remains second – he collected 1,400 points in the past week, including 800 for finishing third – while Jonas Vingegaard, second in the race, climbed from seventh to third and earned more than 1,600 points in the final third of the race.
Vingegaard’s Team Visma | Lease a Bike team-mate Matteo Jorgensen jumped from sixth to fourth, but Jasper Philipsen fell from third to fifth as even though he won the race’s final sprint, the other five days were too mountainous for him to earn any points.
Alpecin-Deceuninck’s sprinter, however, does remain the best-ranked sprinter and now has a comfortable lead of almost 800 points to Tim Merlier, who would need to win at least five races to close the gap. Philipsen finished second in the Tour’s sprint classification to Intermarché-Wanty’s Biniam Girmay, who, courtesy of winning the green jersey and three stages, is now fourth in the Sprint sub-division.
Watch: Road Code Ranking explained
But in all honesty, it’s all about Pogačar and the only two riders who could remain within 10 minutes of him in the past month. The Slovenian has cemented his lead in the Climb category, with Evenepoel second and Vingegaard third; the former leads the latter simply because he’s raced more this season. Meanwhile, Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) climbs to ninth after winning the Tour’s polka dot jersey.
Pogačar, to the surprise of no one, has a lead in excess of 4,000 points in the Grand Tour ranking after dominating both the Giro and Tour. So unless someone wins all 21 stages and all the jerseys on offer at the Vuelta a España, he is guaranteed to top that sub-division at the end of the season.
Vingegaard and Evenepoel are second and third, respectively, placings which reflect the amount of points the duo picked up while in France. Despite stage wins being worth 50 points less in the Giro, Dani Martínez (Red Bull – BORA - hansgrohe), Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) and Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) remain in the top seven.
The two sub-categories where Evenepoel does have the better of Pogačar are Individual Time Trial and one-week Stage Races. In the Individual Time Trial sub-division, the world champion is 60 points ahead of Pogačar, winner of the Stage 21 TT in Nice, while INEOS Grenadiers’ Filippo Ganna drops to third.
As the season takes a brief pause before the Olympic Games, the Road Code Ranking accurately reflects who have been the most consistent performers of the season, while those like Vingegaard who have raced less frequently but have shone in the highest-quality races, are also high up in the various sub-categories, often ahead of the riders who have raced more but haven’t beaten the best riders as often.