The most successful team of the 2022 season
14 Dec 2022 in Analysis / 4 min read
The 2022 mountain bike cross country season was packed with exciting races and thrilling performances. We were able to enjoy a great season with many exciting World Cup races, Nino Schurter & Pauline Ferrand-Prevot both writing history at the World Championships and some great late season races.
Riders and teams are already in full preparation for the next season, but we wanted to take a closer look back at the 2022 XCO season.
In this blog post, we will take a look at the statistics of all UCI teams and determine which team was the most successful one of the season.
Race Days
Number of race attendences varied vastly between 158 and 6 races for the 2022 season. The Top3-Teams were BH Tempo Cafés UCC with 158 race attendences, followed by JB Brunex Superior with 154 race attendences and ranking on 3rd spot KMC-Orbea with 149 race attendences.
Wins
BMC MTB Racing were unstoppable in 2022 and secured a total of 18 race wins in 2022. Second spot goes to Specialized Factory Racing with 17 wins - sharing the second spot with BH Templos Cafés UCC.
Podiums
While coming short for one win to reach the top spot at the most wins category, Specialized Factory Racing turned the tables for the most podiums. On 38 occasions, someone wearing the “S” stood on a podium in 2022 - but yet again they need to share the their spot with BH Templos Cafés UCC, ahead of Trek Factory Racing with 32 podiums.
DNFs
Where there is light, there must be shadow… while the DNF ranking is the one where teams will try not to be at the top, it was heavily contested in the 2022 season. But, we are more interested in the teams that did well and whose riders managed to reach the finish line in (almost) all of the races. There was no team that managed to finish every race they attended, but 15 teams in total to finish the season with only 1 DNF.
Standing out from these teams are Thömus Maxon, Norco Factory Racing and Giant Factory Off-Road Team, for which one DNF means 1.1 %, 1.3 % and 1.4 % of races respectively.
% Wins
We already covered who came out on top in terms of absolute number of wins. Wins in relation to race days paints a very different picture though: PURMTB Team was able to celebrate a win in nearly every 5th race with a 18.9 % win rate. In second place came Primaflor Mondraker Genuins with 17.5 %, followed by Canyon CLLCTV with 17.1 %.
% Podiums
SCOTT - Goldstar Sports Racing Team missed out on a single win in 2022, but stood on the podium in 53.8 % of races. Coming in on 2nd spot was Serneke Allebike MTB Team with 47.2 % podiums, followed by Trinity Racing MTB, who were able to secure a podium spot in 42.5 % of races.
Which Was The Best Team In 2022?
The answer to this question is not as straightforward as it seems, since it depends on the data and metrics you select.
According to the UCI Endurance Team Ranking, Specialized Factory Racing scored the most points and is therefore rightfully #1 team. However, if you want to consider the number of wins, they only came in 2nd after BMC MTB Racing, who are ranked 3rd in the UCI Team Ranking. The UCI Ranking uses the UCI points scale which rates e.g. a win in a WC race higher compared to a win in a C3 race.
It is arguably harder to win a World Cup than a C3 event, but nevertheless we tried to view it from the simplest possible point of view: pure number of wins, number of podiums and number of DNFs.
Retrieving the data from our database and sorting the results as mentioned before, we ended up with those three teams being the best teams of the 2022 MTB Cross Country season:
In case you want to inspect the data yourself, here’s the full table:
Overall, BMC MTB Racing was the most successful mountain bike cross country team of the 2022 season. Their impressive race attendance, numerous wins, and consistent podium finishes make them a force to be reckoned with in the world of mountain biking.