What's CQ?

CQ is short for Cycling Quotient. The CQ-ranking is a world ranking of professional road cyclists, based on their performances during the last 12 months. It can be seen as the non-official successor of the UCI-ranking which disappeared when the ProTour was introduced in 2005. 

For years, the UCI published weekly a world ranking, the UCI-ranking (formerly known as FICP-ranking). This ranking gave a value to all professional cyclists and was used in this respect in the webcompetition Gigabike. In 2005, the UCI abandoned the UCI-ranking while introducing the ProTour. Because Gigabike still required an overall ranking system of professional cyclists, the organizers decided to calculate the ranking themselves from that moment on. They called their ranking initially the Anja-ranking, based on the first names of the data managers, being Andy Roose and Jasper Van Hoof. 

In 2007 Anja became CQ, representing a more professional approach. On April 14th, 2007 this website was launched with the intention to make the ranking and the results database accessible for all cycling fans all over the world. 

The point scales used for the CQ-ranking are still based on the old UCI-ranking scales and follows the race categorisation as defined by the UCI.  Since its foundation in 2005 only some limited adjustments were done to the existing scales. The applied scales for the different race categories can be found here. 


Women CQ

Although the UCI-ranking for women still exists, the organizers of Gigabike also decided to start calculating the women Anja/CQ-ranking for their spin-off Chicabike. The main arguments for doing that, were the availability at all times of the ranking and the fact that the UCI made some mistakes in their calculations! Some people might remember the Bubnenkova/Boubnenkova confusion. Even at this moment there are still mistakes in the UCI-ranking. For example, in the final ranking of 2006: ...there were no points awarded to the world cup leader after the world cup races (according to the UCI rules, that rider must receive 10 points), ...no points were awarded in the NC time trial of Germany, France, Switzerland and Belgium, ...too many points were awarded in the NC time trial of Australia, ...no points were awarded in stage 2 of the New Zealand Tour, ...often too many riders received points in TTT's, ...Clemilda Fernandes appeared two times (Silva Clemilda Fernandes and Fernandes Silva Cremilda), ...the NC of Egypt was actually the African championship of 2005 in Egypt, etc. etc.

Check this column from Rob De Haan  (in Dutch) dd April, 2 2008.