Sports and Exercise Science: Fully Funded UKRI & INEOS PhD Studentship: Race Strategy in Professional Cycling

The main aim of this project is to develop the evidence on professional cycling racing trends and define the best indicators of how and when races are won. This evidence will be used to inform race future race strategy and live race tactics. 

There are multiple factors that influence the strategy and tactics in professional cycling racing, and these have changed significantly since Covid. Some of these factors include the course design, environmental factors, the peloton strength, rider type, and power profiles of individual riders. All of these are dynamic and the way they interact to impact on racing trends and race outcome remains relatively unknown.  

The specific objectives include:  

• Historical analysis of racing from the past 3-5 years across Grand Tours, one day races (monuments and semi-classics) and select World Tour 1 week stage races. The data sources will include video and previous race commentary to ‘code’ key events in races that help define observable events based on expert knowledge and available evidence.
• Development of a post-race analysis structure, process and data ‘toolkit’ that can build on historical understanding of race trends to provide immediate post-race feedback to Sport Directors that can be used to assess race strategy and tactics.
• Research, review and develop models based on objectives 1 and 2 to develop a race prediction model for stage racing that can be used to inform live in race decisions based on emerging events.

The successful candidate will also spend time embedded in a professional cycling environment and gain significant experience in hands on data collection, data analysis, data presentation and interpretation.  

Funding duration: 4 years 

Funding Comment

This scholarship covers the full cost of tuition fees, an annual stipend at UKRI rate (currently £19,237 for 2024/25) and a minimum additional top up of £3000 per annum.  

Additional research expenses of up to £1,000 per year will also be available. 

Advert information