Published November 10, 2020 08:07AM
Arnaud Démare, Deceuninck – Quick-Step top 2020 WorldTour win list
The Groupama-FDJ sprinter took 14 wins in 2020, while the Belgian "Wolfpack" took 39, in a shortened and compressed 2020 season.
Démare took the points classification at the Giro last year and now eyes the Tourss (Photo: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
The 2020 season may have been short and compact due to the coronavirus crisis, but that did not stop French sprinter Arnaud Démare from winning no less than 14 races, making him the winningest rider on the men’s WorldTour circuit.
With a season literally amputated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which halted all racing just after Paris-Nice in March, the Groupama- FDJ rider did not even start his winning tally until August, when he cruised to victory in Milano-Turin. And while he won Belgian races like the Tour de Wallonie as well as the French national championships, Italy was home to his greatest success, as he won no less than four stages in the Giro d’Italia and captured the maglia ciclamino, the equivalent of the green points jersey in the Tour de France.
Primož Roglič, Tadej Pogačar, and Remco Evenepoel finished closest behind the Frenchman with 12 victories for Roglič, and nine each for Pogačar and Evenepoel.
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What is even more impressive is that, despite the shortened season, Démare won nearly as many races as his predecessors — Dylan Groenewegen won 15 in 2019, Elia Viviani won 18 in 2018, and Jakub Mareczko won 14 in 2017. Only Andre Greipel (2010), Peter Sagan (2013), and Alexander Kristoff (2015) have hit the 20-win mark in the past 10 years.
Meanwhile, the Belgian Deceuninck – Quick-Step team was once again the winningest WorldTour team, closing out the season with 39 victories, well ahead of UAE-Team Emirates and Jumbo-Visma with 33 and 23 wins respectively. What is even more impressive is the fact the Belgian armada topped the victory count every year since 2012. But the truncated season offered them fewer possibilities and this is the first year where they have finished with less than 50 wins and is nearly half as many wins as their overwhelming 2018 season where they scored no less than 73 victories.
While victory count is always a highly-coveted metric, it should not be confused with the UCI rankings which calculate not only victories but all placings in major races. Primož Roglič, winner of Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Vuelta a España, took the top individual prize in the men’s UCI rankings, while Anna van der Breggen, who won the Fleche-Wallonne, the 2020 world championships road and tt events, and the Giro Rosa, topped the women’s field. Roglič’s Jumbo-Visma team also took top team honors in the men’s category while the Trek-Segafredo team was the top-ranked women’s team.