2024 Season in Review Part 2: Who Were the Season's Top Performers?

Looking at four key metrics to rank the top riders during the 2024 season

Due to Tadej Pogačar ripping through the 2024 pro cycling season with a nearly unprecedented potency, it is unusually easy to name the season’s top rider. However, I wanted to step back and take stock of the end-of-season rankings (UCI/PCS points and wins), and use some home-brewed weighted metrics in an attempt to fully understand just how far away Pogačar is from the others, give context to his performances, and, most importantly, rank the top six riders from the 2024 pro cycling season (for a breakdown on the top teams, check out last week’s BTP Team Rankings Breakdown).

To accomplish this, I’ve narrowed down the year’s top riders to six candidates: the top three in the UCI and PCS points rankings, Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel, and Jasper Philipsen, plus the Tour de France runner-up, Jonas Vingegaard, the winner of the season’s third Grand Tour, Primož Roglič, and Mathieu Van der Poel, due to the prestige and difficulty of his limited 2024 accomplishments.

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First, let’s look at the top 30 riders in the UCI and PCS Points, along with win rankings, and go through a few takeaways.

Top 30 2024 UCI Rider Points Rankings

Quick Takeaways: For the fourth straight year, Tadej Pogačar took the top spot in the UCI points rankings and finished in the top two for the fifth consecutive season.

• His near-doubling of second-place finisher Remco Evenepoel’s points total shows an almost absurd combination of consistency and result-getting from a rider who can seamlessly shift between winning the biggest stage and one-day races at will.

Top 30 2024 Rider PCS Rankings

Quick Takeaways: In the Pro Cycling Stats points rankings, like UCI point rankings, Pogačar also finished in the top spot for the fourth consecutive year and his fifth-straight top-two finish.

• However, due to the retooling of the UCI points distribution system between the 2022-2023 seasons to give more weight to bigger races, his relative margin of victory over Evenepoel, who is still in second place.

• Pogačar’s UAE teammate Marc Hirschi moves into third place due to his impressive nine-race win tally, accomplished mainly at second and third-tier races, while Ben O’Connor falls from 4th to 6th, and Jonas Vingegaard, who won three one-week stage races, moves into 5th place.

Top 30 Win Rankings

While the total win rankings are interesting, if we distill them down to just top tier (WorldTour plus Olympic and World Championships) wins, we get a much clearer picture of which riders had the best season.

Quick Takeaways: Unlike 2023, Tadej Pogačar completed the UCI/PCS points & Win ranking sweep with 25 wins (the most since Alessandro Petacchi’s 2005 season), with an absurdly good 78% win-to-podium rate.

• Perhaps even more staggering than his 25 wins are his nearly unprecedented 24 top-level wins (WorldTour+WC+Olympic) wins (compared to Petacchi’s 15 top-level wins during his 2005 season),

• Primož Roglič, who finished a modest 13th place in the total win rankings, finished second in the top-level win sub-rankings by ensuring all eight of his wins in 2024 came at the biggest races.

  • This is an incredibly impressive tally, especially considering that at 35 years old, Roglič is still one of the most prolific big-race winners in the sport. Even in a somewhat disappointing 2024 season, he was the best of the rest behind his all-time great Slovenian countryman.

• Tim Merlier quietly finished in second place in the total win rankings and third, in the top-level sub-rankings, lifted by his three stage wins at the Giro d’Italia.

• The Lidl-Trek duo Mads Pedersen and Jonathan Milan both finished ahead of Jasper Philipsen, who had a ‘down’ year compared to his 19 wins in 2023, while still taking three Tour de France stage wins and looking like the best big-race sprinter in the world.

• Jonas Vingegaard finished in 7th place with nine wins despite missing a massive chunk of the season following a near-fatal crash at the Tour of the Basque Country in the early season.

• Wout van Aert failed to finish in the top 30 of the total win rankings for the second consecutive year, after finishing in the top ten every year between 2020-2022.

  • This may be largely due to his seemingly never-ending cycle of injury, recovery, and crashing, but it still speaks to just how quickly a poor patch of luck can snowball and leave a top-level rider struggling for consistent results.

• He may have won the E3-Flanders-Roubaix treble, but with only four total wins, Mathieu van der Poel failed to crack the top 50 in the win rankings and finished 14th in the top-level win sub-rankings due to failing to win a single WorldTour race after April.

  • While he has accomplished the incredible feat of winning four Monuments over the last two seasons, Van der Poel won’t be able to lay claim to the title of the world’s best rider until he starts targeting a larger swath of races and stops using the sport’s biggest race, the Tour de France, as an all-expenses-paid training camp.

Comparing Success

While these numbers above leave little doubt that Tadej Pogačar was the best rider of the 2024 season, I wanted to do a like-for-like comparison against the other top riders to get a clear comparative ranking.

2024 Accomplishments Per Top Rider:

• Tadej Pogačar
  UCI Point Rank: 1st
  PCS Point Rank: 1st
  Wins: 25 (24 top tier)
  Grand Tours: 1st overall at Giro d’Italia, 1st overall at Tour de France, 12x stage wins (Giro & TdF)
  One-Week: 1st at Volta a Catalunya, 4x stage wins
  Monument Podiums: 1st at Liège–Bastogne–Liège, 1st at Il Lombardia, 3rd at Milan-Sanremo
  Other Notable WT Wins: 1st at Strade Bianche, 1st at GP Montréal
  Notable non-WT Wins: 1st at World Championship RR

• Remco Evenepoel
  UCI Point Rank: 2nd
  PCS Point Rank: 2nd
  Wins: 9 (6 top tier)
  Grand Tours: 3rd overall at Tour de France, 1x stage wins (TdF)
  One-Week: 1st overall at Volta ao Algarve, 3x stage wins (Algarve, Paris-Nice, Dauphiné)
  Monument Podiums: 2nd at Il Lombardia
  Other Notable WT Wins: N/A
  Notable non-WT Wins: 1st at Olympic RR, 1st at Olympic TT, 1st at World Championship TT

• Jasper Philipsen
  UCI Point Rank: 3rd
  PCS Point Rank: 3rd
  Wins: 9 (7 top tier)
  Grand Tour: 3x stage wins (TdF)
  One-Week: 3x stage wins (Tirreno-Adriatico, Belgium Tour, Renewi Tour)
  Monument Podiums: 1st at Milano-Sanremo, 2nd at Paris-Roubaix
  Other Notable WT Wins: 1st at Brugge-de Panne
  Notable non-WT Wins: 1st at Münsterland Giro

• Mathieu van der Poel
  UCI Point Rank: 5th
  PCS Point Rank: 8th
  Wins: 4 (3 top tier)
  Grand Tour: N/A
  One-Week: 1x stage win (Tour de Luxembourg)
  Monument Podiums: 1st at Tour of Flanders, 1st at Paris-Roubaix, 3rd at Liège–Bastogne–Liège
  Other Notable WT Wins: 1st at E3 Saxo Classic
  Notable non-WT Wins: N/A

• Jonas Vingegaard
  UCI Point Rank: 7th
  PCS Point Rank: 5th
  Wins: 9 (5 top tier)
  Grand Tour: 2nd overall at Tour de France, 1x stage win (TdF)
  One-Week: 1st at Tirreno-Adriatico, 1st at Tour de Pologne, 1st at O Gran Camiño, 5x stage wins
  Monument Podiums: N/A
  Other Notable WT Wins: N/A
  Notable non-WT Wins: N/A

• Primož Roglič
  UCI Point Rank: 8th
  PCS Point Rank: 9th
  Wins: 8 (8 top tier)
  Grand Tour: 1st overall at Vuelta a España, 3x stage wins (La Vuelta)
  One-Week: 1st overall at the Critérium du Dauphiné, 3x stage wins (Dauphiné & Basque Country)
  Monument Podiums N/A
  Other Notable WT Wins: N/A
  Notable non-WT Wins: N/A

Ranking the Top Six

Pulling out their highlights and comparing them side-by-side makes the enormity of Tadej Pogačar’s dominance clear. His staggering number of Grand Tour GC, stage victories, and mastery across the entire calendar give him a 66 on the in-house weighted BTP season quality score, but behind him, the hierarchy is far more difficult to discern.

2024 Race-Type Success Matrix

Podium Tally by Race Type:

After looking at these figures and tables, it's clear that none of the five non-Pogačar riders have even a decent claim to being the season’s top rider. Pogačar won the most races at the highest level, with the greatest consistency and variability.

• But the fight for second through sixth isn’t as apparent.

  • For example, while Vingegaard might have literally finished second best behind Pogačar at the Tour de France, he lacks an overall Grand Tour win, like Roglič, and didn’t have the same level of late-season success as Evenepoel. the season-wide

  • And, while the Alpecin-duo of Van der Poel and Philipsen might have had the best one-day performances behind Pogačar, they did so at the expense of Grand Tour performances.

    • To highlight this, the two combined had fewer Grand Tour stage podiums than Primož Roglič.

  • Verdict: Considering all of this, Tadej Pogačar is clearly the best rider of the season due to his ability to score top results across every type of major race with historic potency.

    • Behind him, Evenepoel, who is the only rider to lack a gap in the podium matrix, edges out Vuelta-winner Roglič due to the combination of his Tour de France podium finish, single Monument podium, and Olympic Games sweep.

    • Roglič, in turn, comes in ahead of Vingegaard for third due to having more success winning top-tier wins and fewer gaps in his ‘2023 Race-Type Success Matrix’, and Van der Poel comes in fourth due to lacking the raw amount of success across the entire calendar as the other three.

    • Due to his impressive E3-Flanders-Roubaix treble, Van der Poel finishes in front of his teammate Philipsen, even though the Belgian sprinter outperformed his superstar teammate in most tangible metrics.

      • BTP Top 2024 Rider Rankings
        1) Tadej Pogačar
        2) Remco Evenepoel
        3) Primož Roglič
        4) Jonas Vingegaard
        5) Mathieu van der Poel
        6) Jasper Philipsen

2024 Major Races in Review

Monuments
Milano-Sanremo: Jasper Philipsen
Tour of Flanders: Mathieu van der Poel
Paris-Roubaix: Mathieu van der Poel
Liège–Bastogne–Liège: Tadej Pogačar
Il Lombardia: Tadej Pogačar

Grand Tours:
Giro d’Italia: Tadej Pogačar
Tour de France: Tadej Pogačar
Vuelta a España: Primož Roglič

World Championships:
Road Race: Tadej Pogačar
Time Trial: Remco Evenepoel

Olympics:
Road Race: Remco Evenepoel
Time Trial: Remco Evenepoel