Now that the season has come to an end, it’s time to draw up the balance. For Lotto Soudal, it was a record year. With forty wins and the ninth place in the UCI WorldTour ranking, the team can be satisfied with this beautiful season. Only during the wonder year of Philippe Gilbert in 2011, the team ended higher in the WorldTour ranking.
The numbers:
Lotto Soudal finished ninth in the UCI WorldTour ranking, where they quadrupled their points total in the second half of the season. From 206 at the end of May when they were eleventh in the ranking, to 832 at the end of the year. In the second half of the season, Lotto Soudal was the team to collect the third most WorldTour points, after Movistar and Katusha.
Second half of the season 2015 (31/05 – end of the season):
Movistar: 876
Katusha: 770
Lotto Soudal: 626
Together, the five best riders of the Lotto Soudal team collected 832 WorldTour points in 2015: 203 by André Greipel, 195 by Tim Wellens, 127 by Tony Gallopin, 106 by Bart De Clercq, 101 by Tiesj Benoot and Lotto Soudal gained 100 points thanks to the seventh place in the team time trial at the World Championships.
First Lotto Soudal rider in the individual UCI WorldTour ranking is André Greipel in 24th place, followed by Tim Wellens in 25th place. Both are the second best rider of their country in this classification (Greipel behind Degenkolb and Wellens behind Van Avermaet). Tony Gallopin finished 40th (127 points), Bart De Clercq 43rd (106 points), Tiesj Benoot 47th (101 points), Jürgen Roelandts 52nd (82 points), Jens Debusschere 80th (48 points), Maxime Monfort 96th (36 points), Jurgen Van den Broeck 108th (28 points), Tosh Van der Sande 154th (8 points), Boris Vallée 193rd (2 points) and Kris Boeckmans 208th (1 point).
The record of forty UCI wins was established this year thanks to ten different Lotto Soudal riders. This resulted in a shared third place in the ranking of team wins, after Etixx-Quick Step (54), Team Sky (43) and Katusha (40). Last year, the team won 29 times with eight different riders. Next to that, a Lotto Soudal rider was able to finish on the podium 47 times. Both André Greipel and Kris Boeckmans became the rider with the most victories in their country.
The 40 wins:
André Greipel 16
Kris Boeckmans 8
Jens Debusschere 4
Tim Wellens 3
Pim Ligthart 2
Sean De Bie 2
Tony Gallopin 2
Kenny Dehaes 1
Jurgen Van den Broeck 1
Bart De Clercq 1
The Lotto Soudal rider with the most race days and race kilometres of 2015 is Jens Debusschere. The West-Flemish rider has 95 race days which gives a total of 15,875 race kilometres. Because of this, he’s also the rider with the most race kilometres of all WorldTour riders (only races of the category .1 or above and races where the rider reached the finish). Thomas De Gendt and Maxime Monfort joined him on the Lotto Soudal podium concerning the most race days, 90 (= 13,547 km) and 88 race days (= 13,512 km) respectively. Regarding kilometres, Debusschere wins ahead of Greipel (14,678 km) and Hansen (13,875 km). This makes up a total of 210,910 kilometres for all the Lotto Soudal riders together.
GC record holder Adam Hansen finished the three Grand Tours this year. Due to this, he’s holding the record of completing thirteen Grand Tours in a row.
Xue Sun 34 years | today |
Hijiri ODA 26 years | today |
Chengce ZHAO 33 years | today |
Carlos BOGANTES 28 years | today |
Luis Guillermo MORA 30 years | today |
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