State of the 2024 USA Cycling Union: WorldTour Wins & Rider Numbers Stagnate While Individual Quality Increases

Checking in on the state of American cycling at the sport's highest level prior to the 2024 road racing season

When I sat down for an in-depth examination of the state of Americans in the WorldTour the last few off-seasons, I found that while the raw number of US riders was at a 15-year low, the performance and quality of each individual rider was only not dropping at a corresponding rate, but, was, in fact, significantly increasing on a per rider basis. Since I have found this to be an interesting and helpful exercise, I wanted to use it as an annual check-up by coming back and updating it for the 2024 season.

• And, checking back one year on, I found that this trend of the declining number of riders, which is up ever-so-slightly to 13 riders in 2024, is once again the lowest count since 2008, and while wins are still not high enough considering the level of talent, were at a five year high.

  • By themselves, these numbers could indicate that US cycling, while no longer in a free-fall, is suffering from anemic growth and not reflecting the level of young talent being produced, but beneath the surface, the numbers once again tell a more complex, even encouraging, story.

USA WorldTour Rider Long-Term Trendlines

To kick things off, let’s take stock of every US rider slated to race in the WorldTour in 2024 (listed in order of their PCS points gained in the 2023 season):

List of Riders From the United States In The 2024 WorldTour:
1) Sepp Kuss-Visma
2) Neilson Powless-EF
3) Matteo Jorgenson-Visma
4) Brandon McNulty-UAE
5) Magnus Sheffield-Ineos
6) Kevin Vermaerke-DSM
7) Will Barta-Movistar
8) Quinn Simmons-Trek
9) Sean Quinn-EF
10) Luke Lamperti-Soudal-QuickStep
11) Lawson Craddock-Jayco AlUla
12) Larry Warbasse-AG2R
13) Andrew (AJ) August -Ineos

• Despite losing Joe Dombrowski, who officially retired this week after not being able to find a competitive contract offer for 2024, the number of Americans in the WorldTour has actually increased since last year due to the promotion of youth sensations Luke Lamperti (21) and Andrew (AJ) August (18) into the sport’s top ranks.

  • Even with the slight increase from 2023, the number of Americans in the WorldTour is still significantly down from the numbers seen prior to the 2021 season, and the trendline is still down over the last decade (it is worth noting that one of the sport’s top second-division teams, Israel-Premier Tech, has two WT-caliber young Americans on staff, Matthew Riccitello and Riley Sheehan).

    • For example, in 2011, 29 Americans were signed to WorldTour teams, but the number has decreased nearly every season, and in 2024, had fallen a whopping 55% from this high water mark.

If we look at wins at the top two tiers of professional races (WorldTour & .Pro) by US riders over the same timeframe, we can see a similar downward trendline, but, just like the number of American riders in the WorldTour, there has been a slight recent uptick in quantity, and a significant increase in quality with Sepp Kuss’s Vuelta a España victory ending a decade-long US Grand Tour winning drought.

• It is worth noting that the non-WT .pro win figures and, in turn, the combined win totals before 2020 are slightly skewed upwards due to the presence of now-defunct US-based pro races like the Tour of California, Tour of Utah, and Colorado Classic, which gave American riders a chance to rack up wins on home soil.

Looking Deeper Tells a Different (and Better) Story

While the number of riders and total high-quality win numbers are useful to understanding where US riders stand in the grand scheme of things, if we peel back a layer, we can see an extremely important data point that helps explain both the decreasing number of US riders and results in top races from those riders. This is the increasing number of teams the US riders are spread amongst.

For example, in 2010, there were 21 US riders on three WorldTour teams, meaning there were 7 US riders per WT team with at least one US rider. Flash forward to 2024, and there are 13 US riders spread over 10 WT teams, which means an average of 1.3 US riders per WT team has at least one US rider.

• This dilution of US riders tells us that the main reason for plunging US participation at the top level of the sport is more due to the decrease of US-based teams signing US-based riders just for the sake of sponsorship reasons than decreasing levels of quality in the rider pool.

• It also has the effect of giving US riders fewer chances to ride for themselves and net wins since instead of a team few consolidating the country’s top stars onto a single team to highlight their talents, they are instead hired away by superteams to bolster domestique support for their superstar riders.

  • For example, a rider like Enric Mas is currently worth more to Movistar as a team leader, whose main goal is to highlight home-grown Spanish riders, than as a domestique on a team like Visma or UAE.

  • But without the presence of teams like Movistar, Mas’ market rate as a leader/featured rider would plummet, meaning he would have to market himself to a bigger team as a helper to command a high salary.

• This dynamic also means the ‘quality bar’ US riders are forced to clear to make it into the WT is much higher than in the past since the concept of a team picking up three non-result-generating US riders just to satisfy a sponsor is quickly dying and any American being picked up by a European-based team has to be able to out-produce the locally available talent since the sponsors of nearly every WT team have nothing to gain by increased promotion in North America.

  • Even though there are technically two US-registered teams in the WT (EF & Lidl-Trek), their focus (and ownership) in recent years has shifted towards the European market regarding rider and sponsorship acquisition.

    • For example, the EF team's parent company is based in Switzerland, and Trek’s main title sponsor, Lidl, is German.

      • Despite a growing presence in the US, Lidl is extremely focused on the European market.

  • This means the USA is behind another similar ‘outsider’ country, Australia, which has done a great job of producing world-class riders despite a small population and niche cycling culture standpoint but has built up its own Aussie-focused WorldTour team (Jayco) that gives local riders platform to Europe (i.e. Kelland O'Brien) and/or a port in a mid-career storm (i.e. Caleb Ewan).

Average American Rider Quality Has Never Been Higher

There is perhaps no better metric for the quality bar American riders are forced to clear to make it at the top than the Pro Cycling Stats points per US rider.

• While the trendline has held steady since 2009, the number of PCS points per US rider surged in 2023, making it the only major metric that hasn’t decreased over the past 15 seasons.

• In fact, the 423 PCS points per US rider in 2023 are nearly twice as many as the 217 PCS points per US rider in 2018, when American riders won over twice as many races in the top two tiers of professional races (15 vs 7).

  • This metric confirms what any casual observer of US riders would have suspected: while their raw numbers in the top flight haven’t been increasing, their quality per rider is significantly higher than in the past, potentially even at an all-time high.

The Path to Team Leadership Still Exists Despite Top US Riders Clustering on Star-Studded Teams

While I was worried at the beginning of the 2023 season that the lack of any true American run and sponsored teams would limit the career path of even the most talented American riders, I’m slightly more optimistic heading into 2024. If a long-time domestique like Sepp Kuss can find the support within his star-studded Jumbo-Visma team to go for overall victory at the Vuelta, it is clear that if Americans are talented and focused enough, they can find a leadership space on foreign teams.

• And, due to more young Americans forging themselves in the much hotter fires of European racing, we should expect the level of talent amongst the Americans to increase over the coming years and that they will be capable of winning the sport’s biggest races.

  • Ironically, this push to get to Europe to develop as racers is partly due to the decline of the professional racing scene in the US, which has left them with almost no other viable options.

• While I was concerned last winter that the top US riders like Sepp Kuss, Neilson Powless, Brandon McNulty, and Matteo Jorgenson were being deployed as support riders for extremely high-profile stars on major teams, the combination of Kuss’ Vuelta win showing that domestiques can force their way to leadership with the right level of talent and mindset, and unrelated market forces since then have opened up opportunities for them.

  • For example, while Neilson Powless could have been viewed as a potential support rider in Grand Tours for Richard Carapaz at EF at the beginning of 2023, a year later, he is EF’s highest points-producing rider over the past 12 months, while Carapaz’s viability as a GC contender is in question after a few seasons of underperformance and injuries.

  • Additionally, when Jorgenson announced his move to Visma for 2024, he seemed to be accepting a career as a highly paid domestique.

    • But, things have changed with the recent departure of Primož Roglič, rumors of a potential outgoing move by Wout van Aert, and their aging one-day core (Dylan Van Baarle, Tiesj Benoot, and Christophe Laporte will all be on the wrong side of 30 this Classics season), there is a foreseeable path to Jorgenson becoming a designated leader on the team in the next few years.

  • Brandon McNulty, who is on a UAE team with a seemingly endless conveyor belt of young talent, is the rider for whom I have the most concerns about finding a clear path to leadership.

    • However, even in that case, UAE’s free-flowing internal structure and unofficial policy of allowing anyone to race for themselves, even against their own teammates, at races where Tadej Pogačar isn’t present means he still has a chance to contest major wins in the near future.

Yet, perhaps the most encouraging sign for the continued growth of US riders at the pointy end of the sport is that when we go further down the age ladder, the next crop of young US riders, like Quinn Simmons (22), Magnus Sheffield (21), Luke Lamperti (21) and AJ August (18) are even more highly touted from a pure talent perspective and are all on teams that aren’t particularly deep with talent, which should give them plenty of chances leadership opportunities.

• In short, while US riders continue to face an uphill battle both getting to the WorldTour and finding leadership once they are there, on the flip side, the level of individual riders hasn’t been higher at any point over the last 1.5 decades, and the key metrics like rider numbers, total wins and points generated per rider are finally beginning to trend in the right direction.