2014 World Tour Rider Age and Nationality

There are 507 riders from 41 nations registered with the 18 UCI World Tour teams for 2014.

The average age of a rider is 28 years and 1 month. The oldest rider is the 42 year-old Jens Voigt (Radioshack) whilst Cannondale’s U-23 World Champion Matej Mohorič is the youngest pro aged 19 and a quarter.

Here’s a look at the 2014 peloton in numbers. There’s a look at rider age, the “oldest team” and also analysis of how many pros come from each country and more.

Let’s start with age. As mentioned the average rider age for 2014 at the start of the season is 28.1, slightly lower than last year. This could be because a few outliers have gone, think Chris Horner and Stuart O’Grady but looking at team rosters some squads have been trawling the U23 scene to fill their ranks. Here are the 18 teams as ranked by average age:



Tinkoff-Saxo assume the title of pro cycling’s gerontocracy and have three of the peloton’s top-10 old croans with Karsten Kroon (37), Nikki Sorensen (38) and Matteo Tosatto (39). Radioshack-Trek were the oldest last year but Trek Factory Racing are rejuvenated… by the retirement of Chris Horner and Andreas Klöden but they still retain the peloton’s oldest rider Jens Voigt. Meanwhile Argos-Shimano remain the young pups of the pro peloton.

Rider Team Date of Birth Age Today Jens Voigt Trek Factory Racing

17/09/1971 42.3 Alessandro Petacchi

Omega Pharma-Quickstep 03/01/1974 40.0 Danilo Hondo

Trek Factory Racing

13/08/1973 39.9 Matteo Tosatto

Tinkoff-Saxo 14/05/1974 39.6 Nicki Sørensen Tinkoff-Saxo 14/05/1975 38.6 Pablo Lastras Movistar 20/01/1976 37.9 Karsten Kroon Tinkoff-Saxo 26/01/1976 37.9 Gabriel Rasch Team Sky

08/04/1976 37.7 Juan Manuel Garate

Belkin 26/04/1976 37.7 Greg Henderson

Lotto-Belisol 10/09/1976 37.3

There’s a cluster of older riders who affect the average age. The mean age for the World Tour is 28 years and one month but the median is 27 years and seven months.

Rider Team Date of Birth Age Today Matej Mohorič Cannondale 19/10/1994 19.2 Rick Zabel

BMC Racing 07/12/1993 20.1 Alberto Bettiol

Cannondale

29/10/1993 20.2 Niccolo Bonifazio Lampre-Merida 29/10/1993 20.2 Sebastian Henao

Team Sky 05/08/1993 20.4 Danny Van Poppel Trek Factory Racing 26/07/1993 20.4 Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier FDJ.fr 30/06/1993 20.5 Boris Vallée Lotto-Belisol

03/06/1993 20.6 Valerio Conti

Lampre-Merida 30/03/1993 20.8 Alexis Gougeard

Ag2r La Mondiale 05/03/1993 20.8

Note Jens Voigt was ranked as the world’s top amateur and the Peace Race in 1994 before Matej Mohorič was even born.

Rider nationality

Now let’s look at where the riders come from. Here’s the breakdown by nationality for the 507 riders;



Outside of the top-20 we have Austria, Luxembourg and Slovakia with five riders, Belarus on four, Czech Republic, Ireland, Lithuania and Sweden each have three, China, Croatia, Japan, South Africa, Ukraine all have two and there’s one each for Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Eritrea, Estonia, Finland and Latvia. Last but not least, a novelty for 2014 with Malaysia’s Loh Sea Keong joining Argos-Shimano.

The big change for 2014 is the increase in Frenchmen. It’s arithmetic given Europcar ride into the World Tour and so bring a lot of extra French riders into the mix to overtake Italy. The flipside is the exit of Belgian and Dutch riders, down six and ten respectively with Vacansoleil-DCM going and the same but worse for Spain after Euskaltel hung up for good, down from 50 to 33 riders. Australia go from 35 to 30.