Source: Velonews.com



Photo credit © Isabelle Duchesne

Alberto Contador and his Astana team topped the season-long world rankings, realised Monday by UCI.
Sweeping to victory at the Tour de France, Contador and Astana racked up just enough points to win the final standings of the reworked "world ranking" that includes points collected during ProTour and Historic events on the UCI racing calendar.
The season wrapped up with Saturday's Giro di Lombardia, which constituded the 24th and final race of the UCI world calendar.
In the individual standings, Contador wins with 527 points to Alejandro Valverde, with 483 points, and Samuel Sanchez, third with 357.
In the team classification, Astana wins with 1,100 points to Caisse d'Epargne's 1,048. Columbia-HTC, which led the way with 85 on the season, ended with 957 points.
Curiously, Astana had only 22 victories all season, but most of them came in the World Calendar, allowing them to win the team classification in the UCI rankings even though six teams posted more victories throughout the year.
Spain led the world nation's ranking, with 1,756 points, followed by Italy, with 984, and Australia, in 3rd with 960.
Columbia-HTC won the season-long sweepstakes on the most numbers of wins across the UCI race categories with 85. Saxo Bank was second, with 43, and Garmin-Slipstream, powered by a very strong second half of the season, ranked third on season-long victories with 29.

Source: cyclingnews.com




Alberto Contador has spearheaded a dominant season for Spanish cycling after finishing on top of the International Cycling Union's (UCI) world rankings, announced on Monday. The Tour de France champion led a Spanish trio, with compatriots Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d'Epargne) and Samuel Sánchez (Euskaltel-Euskadi) taking second and third in the individual rankings, respectively. Contador's trade team Astana finished the season at the top of the team rankings, while Spain finished well clear of Italy as the top nation.

Contador's success this season helped him become the inaugural champion in the UCI's world ranking system. The new system was implemented as a replacement for the ProTour rankings, which due to disputes between race organisers and the UCI had last year, failed to incorporate results from any of the three Grand Tours, Milan-San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix or Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The revised UCI World Calendar ensured that the rankings announced today include results from those seven events.

Despite competing in just four of the 14 UCI World Calendar events in 2009, Contador's victories at the Tour de France and Vuelta Ciclista al Pais Vasco, and high finishes at Paris-Nice and the Dauphiné Libéré were enough to finish world number one. He finished with 527 points, 44 ahead of Vuelta a España winner Valverde (487 points) and 170 in front of Vuelta and Giro di Lombardia runner-up Sánchez (357 points).

Sánchez was one of the most prominent movers in the final world rankings. The Euskaltel rider moved from eighth to replace Andy Schleck in third place. Sánchez secured his position in the rankings with a second place finish in the final event on the UCI World Calendar, Saturday's Giro di Lombardia. The results of the Italian race also saw winner, Philippe Gilbert (Silence-Lotto), catapulted into the world top-10, from 20th to ninth place.

Grand Tour winning teams Astana and Caisse d'Epargne finished first and second in the team rankings, with Columbia-HTC finishing third. Silence-Lotto moved from eighth to sixth, by virtue of Cadel Evans' third place finish at the Vuelta and Gilbert's Lombardia win.

The efforts of their riders throughout the season saw Spain finished almost 800 points clear of Italy in the team rankings. Australian and Germany retained their positions in third and fourth, respectively. Gilbert's Lombardia triumph was enough to see Belgium replace Russia in fifth place.