Medal Count Year Review Part 1
Looking at the data from the women's field
It is now the end of September, and we’ve crossed the autumnal equinox, meaning summer is officially over, and the off-season has begun for most American road racers. Therefore, it is a perfect opportunity for us to engage in a year-end review. This year, we started our data compilation effort known as The Medal Count. The Medal Count was not designed to be a competition but rather to set up domestic road racing for the future via establishing baseline data, i.e., separating fact from social media hype. We’ve gathered that data, and we can do the sports journalist thing that we’ve wanted to do forever— over-analyze it like ESPN commentators get paid millions to do for ball sports.
The Medal Count included, the top 19 events from 2024 and tracked who finished in P1/2/3. We assigned 3 points to P1, 2 to P2 and 1 to P3. That’s it, nothing fancy. The 19 events broke down into 61 racing opportunities. There were 45 criteriums, 3 time trials, and the remaining 10 were road races. We did not include America’s single UCI one-day race because it didn’t fit our goal. The Medal Count isn’t meant to gauge World Tour riders against domestic talent. Instead, we are focused on how American and Canadian teams stacked up against each other (along with other nations’ teams that regularly visit our domestic races like the German 54x11 team). Indeed, changes to the Medal Count are coming for 2025, but that is a story for another article.
In this first article, we will examine data for the women’s field, and to do so, we will go beyond the results available online, which is often only the top 10. In the overall competition, the elite women’s field breaks down into three tiers which we are going to affectionately call (borrowing from our friends at the Media Pit and Belgian CX)— the toppers, the middlers and the field.
The toppers were the four teams that separated themselves from everyone else by a dramatic margin: Virginia’s Blue Ridge/Twenty24, DNA Pro Cycling, Miami Blazers, and L39ion of Los Angeles. The group was led by Twenty24, which proved its metal throughout the year, relentlessly grabbing results in both the stage race and criterium portions of the season. That was also true of DNA, and to a certain extent the Blazers. The Blazers when they competed in stage races it was under the name Williams Racing Devo. However, they would only garner one result during in stage racing-Skylar Schneider’s win at Redlands in the criterium.
The middlers were the group of teams from fifth through ninth that scored sporadic podium spots but didn’t mount the same sustained campaign as the toppers. These were squads like Cynisca, Fount Cycling Group, Goldman-Sachs ETFs, Automatic/ABUS, and, of course, Coryn Labecki. In the case of both Fount and Cynisca, both squads were regularly present on the podium during the early stage races, but they went elsewhere when crits dominated the calendar later in the year. Conversely, for Goldman-Sachs and Automatic, their results came from criteriums. Below these teams, the remainder of the field were those who stole a podium result from the big teams one or two times (with the exception to Team Bridgeline who earned four bronzes).
Returning to the toppers, what separated out the top four teams was simply the number of wins. Twenty24 had more wins, 16 in total, than the rest. Their biggest weapon was Marlies Mejias Garcia, who for the second year in a row, absolutely dominated the criterium scene. Garcia won eight criteriums this year, finished second in three, and third in six. This performance garnered her the top individual spot for obvious reasons. Included with Garcia were teammates Sofia Arreola who had a solid Tucson Bicycle Classic and four total podiums, and Alia Shafi and Emily Ehrlich who each both earned one podium.
Interestingly, the fourth-place team, L39ion, seemed to specialize in winning or going home empty-handed. L39ion was only two wins behind Twenty24’s total but trailed significantly in second and third places. L39ion’s top results were from just two riders, Alexis Magner and Kendall Ryan. This was similar to how the Blazers put together their third-place total, with Skylar Schneider accounting for a large part of their medal haul. Skylar, who won the American Criterium Cup overall, would spearhead the Blazer’s efforts, but her sister Sam also contributed a win at Indy and five additional podium spots. L39ion’s Magner and Ryan contributed more evenly to their team’s success. Both riders had a similar number of podiums, but Ryan would score more wins than her sister Alexis.
On the other hand, DNA found its way to second on The Medal Count in its final season thanks to a broad cast of winning riders. Those efforts were led by Rylee McMullen, the Kiwi sprinter who performed admirably during the ACC points competition. The team was also bolstered by Shayna Powless whose trip to Chicago in July netted her three wins and two third places. DNA also dedicated its resources to stage racing and their results were led early this year by Nadia Gontova who lit up the Tour of the Gila and Redlands. Other riders like Makayla McPherson, Holly Breck, and Harriet Owen would add valuable podiums during criterium season too.
Unsurprisingly, many of the season’s highest-scoring individual riders were from topper teams as well. In fact, only two riders, sixth place Paola Munoz, Goldman-Sachs, and seventh place Lauren Stephens, Cynisca, would come from non-topper squads. In both instances those riders were the driving forces behind their teams’ accomplishments as well. However, Stephens would contribute her results during stage race season, with an emphatic win at Gila, and Munoz would be more prominent during criterium season.
What can we draw from this data? First we have to acknowledge its limitations. By focusing only on the top three spots in each race we see a tremendous number of repeat players. This data could be a lot more useful if we could pull from the top five or ten, but that will require automation on our part (rather than entering the data by hand). There is not a lot of overlap between those who are performing in March, April and May, and the riders who will come to the top as the races get shorter and faster in the summer. The only riders who appeared regularly on podiums in crit and stage racing were Garcia and, to a lesser extent Arreola.
Beyond those conclusions, it is evident that some riders are very streaky. Riders like Powless or Stephens dominated for a week but then vanished from podiums in domestic racing. That, of course, can be explained by UCI schedules and racing abroad, which is something we do not track with much detail here. However, you also have Skylar, Munoz, and Garcia (again) who started the season firing on all cylinders and never let go of that feeling— or better stated res firma mitescere nescit (obviously one of the best quotes from a cycling movie ever).
Breaking away from the trees to see the forest, there is a concentration of results in the hands of perhaps nine teams in the women’s field. But most of that power is wrapped up in just four teams and fewer than six riders. North American racing was a top heavy sport in 2024, but change is coming for 2025. DNA is ending after a successful run, and those riders will scatter looking for new homes. For some of them, like McMullen or Owen, who came to race in America from other continents, there is no guarantee that they will return to the U.S. (however, we doubt that Hazy will abandon Utah for anywhere other than perhaps Malaga). The results here demonstrate that those riders who stay will bring with them a variety of podium finishes and wattage to new teams.
Skylar has already announced that she will rejoin the ranks of the World Tour with SD Worx. This is the same racing organization she left in 2020, then called Boels-Dolmans, when she returned to domestic racing. She has absolutely dominated ever since. Her departure alone opens up 22 podium spots for other riders. With legend Coryn Labecki’s retirement, there are five free podium spots for 2025.
What new riders could fill those spots? One could easily see women like Kim Stoveld and Arielle Verhaaren from Automatic stepping up, predominantly in criteriums. These big changes in the hierarchy of the women’s peloton could lead to unpredictable racing and results. You could also see riders like Elizabeth Dixon and Eleanor Wiseman from Fount, or Mara Roldan, Cynisca, stepping up in stage races. There is a wealth of riders currently ranked just outside the top ten, like these women, who are more than capable.
We will track new team developments and rider transfers throughout the offseason and see where they are when Tucson Bicycle Classic kicks off the 2025 Medal Count.
Photos by Kai Caddy