Vaughters highlights what sets Carapaz apart from 'robot' Vingegaard and criticizes UCI points system: "It's absurd"

The UCI points system has been heavily criticized for years. The rewards are said to be unfair: smaller races, for example, would earn too many points. However, the system also emphasizes achieving as many top finishes as possible instead of setting a number of top goals. EF Education-EasyPost boss Jonathan Vaughters criticizes the system and is unwilling to change race tactics.

Addressing Cyclingnews, the American expresses his frustrations with the UCI rankings. His team is ranked 12th, but that used to be different. "Talking about UCI points, I never want to see this team have one guy finish fourth, one guy 11th, and another in 19th just so we get a bunch of points. To me, that's just so anticlimactic and boring and really sort of a cynical way of racing."

"What I want to see is that the entire team is behind someone, or a plan to get someone to win the race," he continued. "Even if the odds are totally against this, and even if it completely explodes the entire team and we get zero UCI points because we blew ourselves to bits and our best rider was 84th place, that's OK. At least we went in with a plan to win and tried to execute that. It didn't work out for whatever reason, but we did everything we could."

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All-or-nothing racing: it's what Neilson Powless did in the Gran Piemonte.

Vaughters hopes for change: "It's absurd, the whole ranking system"

The fact that a team can collect more points by racing in a different way and adjust their calendar, as Jayco AlUla previously indicated it would do, doesn't bother him. "I couldn't care less. I think it's absurd, the whole ranking system, and designed by people that don't really know what they're doing. I don't care what we're ranked, just as long as we're not ranked 19th, right? But what I do care about is doing things like winning the polka-dot jersey at the Tour de France, winning a stage at the Tour de France, winning a stage in the Giro d'Italia, that's stuff that makes the team different."

In 2022, EF Education-EasyPost was struggling against relegation. At the last minute, they managed to avoid disaster. "In that last relegation cycle, we had to spend the second half of that year racing in a very cynical way and just collecting points. And man did that turn me off," continued Vaughters. "It just felt wrong. I mean, it just felt like we were not even there to win. We're just there to grift off of the other teams and finish fourth and eighth. I never want to see us get into that position again because I like to race all-or-nothing. And the riders that we have, such as Ben Healy or Richard Carapaz, are guys that also like to race all-or-nothing."

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Richard Carapaz won a stage and the polka dot jersey at the Tour de France.

"Richard is the most talented rider I've ever worked with"

Carapaz completed his second year with the American team. Vaughters has nothing but praise for the Ecuadorian Giro d'Italia winner. "Richard is the most talented rider I have ever worked with," the American stated. "He's unbelievably gifted but he's a bit of a wild horse. I would say he's anything but the very programmed, very focused, studious sort of athlete that we're seeing competing at the top level right now - the very mechanical and robotic."

"He's the opposite of Jonas Vingegaard, someone who is watching his diet and watching what he's doing training 365 days a year," Vaughters explained. "Richard comes up to big emotional highs and really performs when he's on that emotional high. So with him, you have to realize that that while sometimes it's frustrating that his full, true potential and talent doesn't always come out, but that that's just who he is as a person, and you've got to work around it and figure out, you know how to bring the best of him out."

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