A decade of change
10 years can change a lot in someone's life, just like a sport can evolve a lot in a decade too. The composition of both the men's & women's peloton changed significantly since 2014. Through this article we have a look at what changed based on a few criteria. We look at the (de)globlization of cycling, at the age of the riders and on the financial side of things. An overview of numbers and more context behind them. A summary of a decade of pro cycling.
A quick look on the map
Before we we dive deeper into a few countries & continents, we firstly look at the world map to have a general view of the current global scale of the World Tour peloton. The first thing that we notice is that we see a decrease in the biggest sports nations on the globe. The United States, Australia, China and Russia all have fewer WT cyclists now than 10 years ago. The USA & Australia lost both about twenty WT cyclists, Russia even more than thirty, so we're not talking about small amounts. On the other hand do we see a noticeable increase of pro cyclists in Western Europe where countries like Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom became signifcally more represented in the World Tour peloton.
Africa : Girmay rises, the continent falls behind
Despite the succeses of Biniam Girmay, African cycling didn't became more livable than 10 years ago. Even if we include the African cyclists who are racing for ProTeams, we still only have eleven African pro cyclists in the current peloton. In 2014, Africa counted on 23 pros. So today, we see that the amount of African cyclists who can live from their sport decreased by a half. Biniam Girmay is a diamond for the usually European orientated sport, but his successes don't really trickle down on his continent. Teams seem still to be hesitant to take African riders and there is no African professional team in the peloton anymore who can give chances to local riders by themselves.
The Ocean remains a big barrier
There are fewer riders from other continents as well. Outside Europe, we only see a small increase of pro riders in Asia. All other continents marked a notable decrease of pro cyclists. This is caused by multiple factors. Lack of domestic racing, domestic teams, inflation and strict visa policies in certain countries all led to the decrease of overseas pros in the peloton.
Europe goes West
But even on the European continent we can notice a few trends. The amount of pro cyclists from Central & Eastern Europe halfed in the past 10 years. Here, there are again a few explanations. The dissapearance of CCC made that most riders from Poland & Central Europe can give up their dream if they weren't World class in the youth categories yet, unlike in other countries where youth riders who perform just below the top can still grow further for years in the pro peloton. In women's cycling we see the opposite direction for Polish riders, because many current WWT riders received a chance at the cotinental MAT Atom Team before they moved up to foreign first tier teams.
Another noticeable example is Russia. The war that has been started by the federal government brought sanctions for Russian professional teams and the harsh visa sanctions made it very hard for even innocent Russian cyclists to still race abroad and show their potential to foreign teams.
More teenagers immediatly go to the top
In both, men's & women's cycling it was uncommon that junior riders immediatly joined a World Tour team at the age of 18. Today, we see that a decent amount of boys skip the U23 category and that the most talented girls immediatly sign for a WWT team instead of riding for a Continental team first. The age of winners decreased too. Although that most riders still reach their peak around the age of 28, the amount of riders who already won a race at the age of 23, at least doubled in comparing with ten years ago.
More women can live from their sport
In 2014, there was only a small amount of riders who was able to live from their sport. Even the majority of the riders who started in the monuments or in the Giro, still had to do a side job during the week days. In 2024, we see that that the women's cycling landscape changed significantly. A World Tour level got established and hundreds of riders are now able to live from their sport alone. Outside the WWT, we also see more & more conti teams who can offer a decent wage and good accomodation to their riders. This made that the UCI, wil lintroduce a new ProTeam level in 2025 to distinguish those teams from the other continental teams.
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