PhD Studentship: Physics/Computer Science/Sports Science: Fully Funded PhD Studentship, Race Strategy in Professional Cycling

The primary objective of this project is to establish the evidence base on professional cycling road ‘racing’ trends and the critical tactical moments that determine how races are won. This evidence will inform future race strategy and live race tactics. 

Multiple factors influence the strategy and tactics in professional road cycling, and these have changed significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of these factors include the course design, environmental factors, the peloton strength, interaction of team strategies, rider skills, and underlying physiological capabilities in the final critical moments. All these factors are highly dynamic in the way they interact to impact racing tactics and trends. 

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 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.  

This scholarship covers the full cost of tuition fees, an annual stipend at UKRI rate (currently £20,780 for 2025/26 and a minimum additional top up of £3000 per annum.  

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

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