2023 Rider Rankings: Who Were the Season's Top Performers?
Going through the end-of-season statical rankings to determine who was the best rider during the 2023 season, and who needs to correct course heading into 2024
After months of racing during the 2023 pro cycling season, one might imagine that it would be easy to determine the sport’s top rider, but this task is far more difficult than it appears at first glance. With Jonas Vingegaard recently tightening his grip on the sport’s biggest grand tour general classification star after being crowned as the best rider of the 2023 season by being awarded the recent Vélo d'Or prize, Mathieu van der Poel getting three massive wins (Sanremo, Roubaix & World Championships) in 2023, Remco Evenepoel producing stunning rides to grab stage wins at the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España, but appearing adrift as a GC contender, and Tadej Pogačar rattling off an absurd number of wins, points (see our recent TOL piece on his absurd winning percentage and race day to PCS points ratio) while failing to win the Tour de France for the second consecutive season, multiple top rider has a decent claim to the throne, while also having a notable gap in their resume.
To remedy this, I wanted to step back and take stock of the end-of-season rankings (points and wins) in an attempt to put the cumulative performances of the top riders into context and, most importantly, discern who actually had the best rider of the 2023 pro cycling season (for a breakdown on the top teams, check out last week’s BTP Team Rankings Breakdown).
To start things off, let’s take a look at the top 20 riders in the UCI and PCS Points, along with win rankings, and go through a few takeaways.
Top 20 2023 UCI Rider Points Rankings
For the third straight year, Tadej Pogačar took the top spot in the UCI points rankings, along with finishing in the top two for the fourth consecutive season.
This shows an almost absurd combination of consistency and result-getting from a rider who can almost seemingly shift between challenging at the biggest GC and one-day races.
Top 20 2023 Rider PCS Rankings
In the Pro Cycling Stats points rankings, like UCI point rankings, Pogačar also gets the top spot for the third consecutive year and his fourth-straight top-two finish.
But due to retooling of the UCI points distribution system in the off-season between the 2022-2023 seasons to give more weight to bigger races, his relative margin of victory in the PCS points table is lower, Evenepoel moves into second ahead of Vingegaard and Wout van Aert falls from 5th to 7th, while Jasper Philipsen, who racked up a significant amount of points at smaller races, moves into 5th.
Top 20 Win Rankings
Looking at the 2023 win rankings, we see that despite increasing his win total, Pogačar failed to defend his win title due to Jasper Philipsen both having a great season and racking up four wins in the final week of the season at the lower-level Tour of Turkey.
The scope of just how good Jonas Vingegaard and Primož Roglič were in 2023 comes into focus due to their ability to land 3rd and 4th in the win rankings despite being GC riders (who have much fewer chances to win than sprinters).
While the total win rankings are interesting, if we distill them down to just WorldTour (plus World Championship) wins, we get a much clearer picture of which riders had the best season.
Quick Win/Rankings Takeaways:
Evenepoel’s tally of 12 WT & WC wins immediately stands out as incredibly impressive (along with the fact that every win he racked up in 2023 was either at a WorldTour, World or National Championship race).
Roglič, Vingegaard, and Pogačar's great years are underlined due to taking a majority of their wins at major races.
This ranking still obscures Mathieu van der Poel’s incredible season, which saw him win two Monuments (Milano-Sanremo & Paris-Roubaix), finish on the podium at another (Tour of Flanders) and win a road race World Championship.
Of course, this is due to the fact that outside of those impressive and high-profile wins, he won little else and underperformed at the Tour de France.
Comparing Success
While my The Outer Line colleagues and I attempted to mathematically weight each win in an attempt to figure out who had the best 2023 season (the exercise found that Tadej Pogačar’s quality win count, race days/points accrued, and races started/races won ratios were historically good), I wanted to do a slightly more subjective ranking of who had the best season.
To do this, I’ve narrowed down the year’s top riders to four candidates, the top three in the UCI and PCS points rankings Pogačar, Vingegaard, and Evenepoel, plus the world championship, Van der Poel, due to the prestige and difficulty of his limited 2023 accomplishments.
Pogačar’s 2023 Highlights:
UCI Point Rank: 1st
PCS Point Rank: 1st
Wins: 17 (10 WT)
Grand Tour: 2nd overall at Tour de France, 2x Stage Wins (TdF)
One-Week: 1st at Paris-Nice, 1st at Ruta Del Sol
Monument Top Tens: 1st at Tour of Flanders, 1st at Il Lombardia, 4th at Milan-Sanremo
Other Notable WT Wins: 1st at Amstel Gold, 1st at La Flèche Wallonne
Notable non-WT Wins: 3rd at World Road Race Championships
Evenepoel’s 2023 Highlights:
UCI Points Rank: 3rd
PCS Point Rank: 2nd
Wins: 13 (12 WT or WC)
Grand Tour: 5x Stage wins (2xGiro, 3xVuelta)
One -Week: 1st at UAE Tour, 2nd at Volta a Catalunya, 3rd at Tour de Suisse
Monument Top Tens: 1st at Liège–Bastogne–Liège, 9th at Il Lombardia
Other Notable WT Wins: 1st at Clásica de San Sebastián
Notable non-WT Wins: 1st at World TT Championships, 1st at Belgian National Road Race Championships
Van der Poel 2023 Highlights:
UCI Points Rank: 7th
PCS Point Rank: 10th
Wins: 6 (3 WT or WC)
Grand Tour: none
One -Week: 1st at Belgian Tour
Monument Top Tens: 1st at Milano-Sanremo, 1st at Paris-Roubaix, 2nd at Tour of Flanders,
Other Notable WT Wins:
Notable non-WT Wins: 1st at World Road Race Championships
Vingegaard 2023 Highlights
UCI Points Rank: 2nd
PCS Point Rank: 3rd
Wins: 15 (11 WT)
Grand Tour: 1st at Tour de France , 2nd at Vuelta a España, 3x Stage Wins (1xTdF, 2xVuelta)
One -Week: 1st at Tour of the Basque Country, 1st at Critérium du Dauphiné
Monument Top Tens: none
Other Notable WT Wins:
Notable non-WT Wins: 1st at O Gran Camiño & 3x Stage Wins
So, Who Was The Best Rider?
By pulling out their highlights and comparing them side-by-side, it immediately becomes obvious that every rider had a great season, only one rider, Tadej Pogačar, was able to get top results across the entire calendar and discipline.
2023 Race-Type Success Matrix
Podium Tally by Race Type:
While the three non-Pogačar riders have a decent claim to being the season’s top rider, Vingegaard won the sport’s biggest and hardest race (as well as being awarded the Vélo d'Or prize for the season’s top rider), Van der Poel nailed a stunning treble with two Monuments and a World title, and Evenepoel led the list in high quality (WorldTour/World Championship) wins, they all had to sacrifice one facet of the calendar in order to accomplish this.
For example, while Vingegaard might have had the better grand tour GC campaign, he did so due to putting no effort and energy into one-day races, and Van der Poel and Evenepoel might have had some great one-day and single-stage performances, but they did so at the expense of grand tour performances.
Meanwhile, Pogačar was able to dominate the biggest one-day event of the season, Tour of Flanders, against Van der Poel, while still being the sport’s second-best grand tour GC racer behind Vingegaard, who wouldn’t be able to be competitive in cobbled races against the top riders.
Verdict: For this reason, Tadej Pogačar, despite his disappointing loss to Vingegaard at the Tour de France, has to be considered the best rider of the season due to his ability to score strong results across every type of major race. Behind him, Remco Evenepoel edges out Tour-winner Jonas Vingegaard for 2nd due to having slightly more WorldTour +World Championship wins and fewer gaps in his ‘2023 Race-Type Success Matrix’, and Van der Poel comes in 4th due to lacking the raw amount of success across the entire calendar as the other three.
BTP Top 2023 Rider Rankings
1) Tadej Pogačar
2) Remco Evenepoel
3) Jonas Vingegaard
4) Mathieu van der Poel
Stars in Need of a Bounce Back in 2024
Wout van Aert
It might be absurd even to suggest that a rider who won E3 against Van der Poel and Pogačar, lit up stages of the Tour de France at will, and finished 5th in the UCI rankings had a down year, but when you are one of the most versatile and talented riders of all time, you are held to a far higher standard.
By nearly every metric, his 2022 was well below the standard he set in 2021. But the most notable letdown to me was his WorldTour win total.
Van Aert WorldTour Wins By Year
2023: 1
2022: 9
2021: 12
2020: 5
As great as Van Aert has been for his Jumbo-Visma teams in grand tours, it is undeniable that he has fallen behind his peers Pogačar and Van der Poel, who have racked up nine Monument victories since Van Aert won his last (and first) at the 2020 Milano-Sanremo.
Richard Carapaz
Since finishing 2nd overall at the 2022 Giro d’Italia, the 30-year-old has completely disappeared from the GC contender conservation due to a mixture of disappointing campaigns (2022 Vuelta) and injury (the first 3/4ths of 2023).
His strong finish in one-day races to finish the 2023 season signals he could be on the verge of a comeback 2024, but it still remains to be seen if he can return to a level in grand tours that would allow him to compete with the new-wave of ultra-young GC contenders.
Enric Mas
The 28-year-old Spaniard is still in his prime and the designated leader of the Movistar team, but a poor 2023, which saw him finish 6th overall at his home grand tour (Vuelta) and be beaten by his countryman Mikel Landa, who is heading to Soudal-QuickStep to become a domestique for Remco Evenepoel, was a low point of his GC career.
With Juan Ayuso emerging as the new Spanish GC star, and the strong-headed Nairo Quintana, who will certainly see himself as the team’s new leader, coming to Movistar in 2024, Mas, who hasn’t won a European WorldTour race in five years despite leading a WorldTour team, is under significant pressure to get back to the level that saw him finish 2nd overall at the 2022 Vuelta.
Jai Hindley
It is someone odd to include a rider who won a stage at the Tour de France en route to a top ten overall finish, but the 27-year-old Hindley, who finished on the podium twice at the Giro d’Italia between 2020-2022 (winning it in 2022), is currently in is danger of being sucked into the domestique vortex of his newly-signed Bora teammate Primož Roglič.
With no significant WorldTour one-day results in his career, the pressure is on Hindley to prove himself capable of winning non-Tour de France grand tours in 2023 if he wants to avoid being slotted into a pre-Vuelta Sepp Kuss role of being a climbing domestique for Roglič (and perhaps even Cian Uijtdebroeks).
2022 Performance Check-In
In last year’s 2022 Rider Rankings recap, I identified three superstars who were in need of a performance step-up in 2023 to retain their status as the peloton’s top performers.
These three riders were Mathieu van der Poel, Primož Roglič, and Julian Alaphilippe.
Looking at their UCI ranking differences, it is immediately clear that Van der Poel, and Roglič, who moved from 9th to 7th and 24th to 4th in the UCI rankings, and, in the case of Van der Poel, won a World Title and two Monuments, were successful in stepping up their performance and being considered two of the top riders in the sport.
However, Alaphilippe, who finished 88th in the rankings, failed to return to his once-great level and continued his multi-year slide.
Alaphilippe Year-Over-Year Performance Decline
2023: 2 wins (4 podiums)
2022: 2 wins (7 podiums)2021: 4 wins (14 podiums)
2020: 3 wins (7 podiums)
2019: 12 wins (19 podium)
2018: 12 wins (19 podiums)
2023 Major Races in Review
Monuments
Milano-Sanremo: Mathieu van der Poel
Tour of Flanders: Tadej Pogačar
Paris-Roubaix: Mathieu van der Poel
Liège–Bastogne–Liège: Remco Evenepoel
Il Lombardia: Tadej Pogačar
Grand Tours:
Giro d’Italia: Primož Roglič
Tour de France: Jonas Vingegaard
Vuelta a Espana: Sepp Kuss
World Championships:
Road Race: Mathieu van der Poel
Time Trial: Remco Evenepoel