July 4/07 1:21 am - Canada Moves Up in Americas Tour Ranking

Posted by Editor on 07/4/07
 

UCI Americas Tour Rankings

Svein Tuft (Symmetrics) continues to lead the UCI Americas Tour after a strong second place in the Tour de Beauce last month. Canada has jumped two spots, to fourth in the Nations rankings, boosted by Tuft's continued successes and Martin Gilbert's (Kelly Benefits) Pan Am Championships win. Symmetrics continues to hold onto second in the team rankings, only 11 points behind the Brazilian Scott-Marcondes squad.

Given that we still have our Nationals to do next week (a number of the South American nations have already had their championships), there is a strong opportunity to move into the top-3, or possibly top-2 (a total of 280 UCI points are available for Nationals, but of course it depends which riders get the points). A top two spot would give Canada six spots at the Worlds for the men's road race (third to sixth ranking gives three spots). The cutoff for rankings which determine Worlds spots is August 15th, and there aren't too many UCI races in the Americas between now and then (Tour of Colombia and Tour of Guadeloupe). The CCA and USA Cycling are trying to get a number of South American races 'de-certified' also, because they did not adhere to the regulations for invitations to squads from other nations (there are some blatant examples of South Americans manipulating the system to score maximum points for themselves...).

The USA is in a more precarious position, in seventh place in Continental rankings, and not in the top-10 in the ProTour rankings. Their Nationals isn't until September, so they can't count on points there. Potentially, they could drop from nine starters in the men's road race to as few as three. At this point, it will take a strong GC result in the Tour by an American to move them up significantly.

Where it gets more interesting is for the Beijing Olympic selection. The cutoff here is the end of September. If Canada can maintain top-3 in the Americas Tour rankings, then we get three spots for the men's road race (the highest is five for a top-10 ProTour ranked nation). A ranking between 4th and 6th would give us two spots. A single time trial spot would also come from a top-4 Americas Tour ranking (another spot would be available if we got a top-15 result at the Worlds in the TT).

Rankings as of July 4, 2007