They’re a proud and passionate bunch over in Reddit’s “peloton” community. They love their bike racing, they know the sport better than most, and they regularly have interesting perspectives to share. Earlier this week, long-time user ser-seaworth – real name Twan Meulenbeld – posted a fascinating breakdown of what the so-called “greatest statistic in cycling” – Dutch rider Wilco Kelderman’s massive pile of WorldTour top 10s without a win.
With Meulenbeld’s permission, we’ve reproduced the entire post here, with a few slight tweaks to make sure it’s up to date (Kelderman added another two top 10s the day after the original post went up). Meulenbeld was keen to say thanks to ProCyclingStats and to the @StatsOnCycling X/Twitter account for enabling the research that went into this post.
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The greatest statistic in cycling, as some have called it, reached a new milestone recently. If you think Remco Evenepoel or Tadej Pogačar are the statistical wonderboys of the peloton, think again.
With his fourth place in stage 7 of the Tour de Suisse, Wilco Kelderman (Visma-Lease a Bike) reached 150 top 10 finishes in the WorldTour. He extended that to 152 a day later, with 10th in the final time trial and ninth overall.
As many of you will be aware, Wilco Kelderman’s career has been one of ups and downs. He has more titanium than collarbone at this point, but he’s ridden in the pink jersey and stood on the final podium of the Giro d’Italia too. One thing remains constant: he doesn’t win. His 152 WT top 10s are impressive, but what makes them stand out is that there are zero (0) wins among them, and there are no riders who even come close to this feat.
Let’s take a look at where and when Kelderman got these results, and put them into context.
So nobody comes close?
To truly appreciate this beautiful statistic, one must of course see other riders’ numbers too. Twitter account @StatsOnCycling has been excellent at keeping track, and the current ranking looks like this:
- Wilco Kelderman: 152
- Simone Consonni: 58
- Guillaume Martin: 55
- Max Walscheid: 42
- Tosh van der Sande: 33
Other riders high in this list include Clement Venturini, Andrea Pasqualon, Max Kanter, Ryan Gibbons, and Hugo Hofstetter. So not only is Kelderman first by a margin of 94 top 10s, he has more top 10s than number two, three and five in the ranking combined. Glorious. TTTs and subclassifications (points/mountain/youth) are not counted by the way. Kelderman is a former TTT world champion, so you can remember that if you start to feel bad for him.
Is 150 top 10s good?
The other side of this statistic, that I haven’t seen many people mention, is how the number 150 fits into context. I’ve looked at the WT top 10s of some other riders around Kelderman’s age of 33:
- Romain Bardet: 148 top tens / 5 wins
- Tim Wellens: 82 top tens / 17 wins
- Michael Matthews: 198 top tens / 28 wins
- Sam Bennett: 103 top tens / 33 wins
- Jasper Stuyven: 101 top tens / 5 wins
- Julian Alaphilippe: 137 top tens / 27 wins
- Warren Barguil: 65 top tens / 5 wins
- Dylan Teuns: 57 top tens / 7 wins
- Arnaud Demare: 119 top tens / 20 wins
- Mikel Landa: 109 top tens / 7 wins
- Primož Roglič: 188 top tens / 60 wins
- Pello Bilbao: 94 top tens / 6 wins
- Diego Ulissi: 115 top tens / 14 wins
- Rafał Majka: 134 top tens / 10 wins
- Thibaut Pinot: 146 top tens / 12 wins
Conclusion: 150 is better than I thought, making this statistic even better.
Kelderman is even close to top 10 in top 10s, and wouldn’t that be great? Among active riders, besides Roglič and Matthews, I found a couple older riders who beat that mark: Alexander Kristoff, Edvald Boasson Hagen, Geraint Thomas, Chris Froome, Nairo Quintana, and a delightful surprise, Bauke Mollema. Adam Yates surpassed Kelderman at the Tour de Suisse, and is currently sitting at 154. (Cavendish is ‘only’ at 137, and Pogačar is currently at 140).
Peter Sagan is teetering on the edge of counting as an ‘active rider’, but he sits at an unparalleled 311 top 10s. Since it’s unlikely Pogačar finishes this season without 10 more top-10 finishes, this is one top 10 too far for Kelderman at this moment.
Kelderman’s breakdown
| Race type | Top 10s |
| Grand Tour GCs | 6 |
| Grand Tour stages | 52 |
| One-week GCs | 25 |
| One-week stages | 66 |
| One-day races | 2 |
| World Championships ITT | 1 |
Kelderman’s always been basically the same type of rider: a GC rider with a good time trial and even a decent punch, but never at the top level climbing-wise. His TT ability has allowed him to bolster this 152 with 19 time trial top 10s, counted here among the GT and one-week stages.
The 52 Grand Tour stages struck me as relatively high, but doing the math for the 2024 season you’ll find 63 Grand Tour stages and 73 stages in one-week races, meaning Kelderman follows that ratio pretty closely and might even have a slight preference for one-week stages.
And for those curious, the only two one-day races Kelderman ever top 10ed were both in 2015: Flèche Wallonne (10th) and GP Montreal (sixth).
Here’s his tally in all the current stage races on the WT calendar:
| Race | GC top 10s | Stage top 10s |
| Tour Down Under | 2 | 2 |
| UAE Tour | 2 | 3 |
| Paris-Nice | 1 | 6 |
| Tirreno-Adriatico | 1 | 9 |
| Volta a Catalunya | 2 | 6 |
| Itzulia Basque Country | 1 | 2 |
| Tour de Romandie | 3 | 5 |
| Giro d’Italia | 2 | 20 |
| Critérium du Dauphiné | 3 | 8 |
| Tour de Suisse | 4 | 12 |
| Tour de France | 1 | 9 |
| Vuelta a España | 3 | 23 |
| Tour de Pologne | 2 | 5 |
| Benelux Tour | 3 | 6 |
| Tour of Guangxi | 0 | 0 |
There’s two ways to see this; either you think it’s a shame that Kelderman doesn’t have that Guangxi top 10 yet to get bingo, or you see this as the most damning evidence so far against Guangxi’s WorldTour status.
The Vuelta is still the race where Kelderman has his most top 10s, spanning the editions of 2022, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2014. In the 2017 edition, where he got fourth place in the end, Kelderman racked up an impressive eight top 10s, including five stages in a row from stage 13 to stage 17.
Of former WorldTour races during his career, Kelderman does have a top 10 in the Abu Dhabi Tour, but is unfortunately missing the Tour of California, Tour of Beijing, and Tour of Turkey.
A quick frequency chart
| Place | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | (11) |
| Amount | 0 | 7 | 10 | 28 | 25 | 19 | 18 | 18 | 14 | 13 | (16) |
Fourth is Wilco’s Place, with a beautiful sloping distribution down towards 10th. Like I said, statistical wonderboy. The 16 11th places were probably done on purpose to keep this beautiful table intact.
The near-misses
Kelderman got second on seven occasions, which in those moment might have been disappointing, but we can now see that these were necessary sacrifices to reach this level of greatness. Let’s look at the seven heroes who narrowly beat out Kelderman and thereby made this post possible:
- 2014 Dauphiné, stage 5: Simon Spilak wins solo. Kelderman beats Adam Yates in a sprint-a-deux, three seconds in front of the rest of the peloton.
- 2015, Eneco Tour stage 4: Jos van Emden wins the TT, five seconds ahead of Kelderman.
- 2016, Pais Vasco stage 2: Mikel Landa finishes first on the 3 km, 10% final climb, just one second ahead of Kelderman. Alberto Contador himself is 10 seconds further behind.
- 2017, Vuelta stage 16: Kelderman puts half a minute into everybody else on the TT, but Chris Froome then puts half a minute into Kelderman.
- 2018, Abu Dhabi Tour GC, won by Alejandro Valverde. After three sprints the race was decided with a TT (Kelderman fifth, 11 seconds ahead of Valverde) and a stage to Jebel Hafeet won by Valverde, with Kelderman again in fifth, this time 15 seconds back.
- 2020, Giro stage 15: Tao Geoghegan Hart wins the extended sprint of three (against Kelderman and Jai Hindley) to Piancavallo. In hindsight his eventual victory started to take shape here, but in the moment Kelderman was 15 seconds off pink, and Geoghegan Hart a further 2:30 behind him.
- 2022, Vuelta stage 12: Kelderman is solo from the break on the final climb, but Richard Carapaz comes up from behind and snatches the win anyway, after Carapaz had definitively let GC go four stages earlier.
Conclusion
The greatest statistic in cycling continues to shine. As a reminder, Kelderman doesn’t have zero wins ever – he’s won three ITTs (including the Dutch national championships) and a GC (Danmark Rundt 2013), they’re just not WT wins. Plus, like I said at the beginning, Kelderman is a former world champion, winning the TTT title with Team Sunweb in 2017. He’s also been part of Grand Tour-winning squads for Jonas Vingegaard, Jai Hindley, and Tom Dumoulin.
Kelderman also has eight separate incidents listed in which he broke one or more bones, including that nasty training camp car accident with Bora, and has still found time to do all of the above. I have a lot of respect for him, and I hope this post might illuminate for some of you why a group of fans always gets so excited on the internet when Kelderman appears.
Do I think Kelderman will ever win a WT race? Wholeheartedly. The Tour of Guangxi awaits, Wilco!
What did you think of this story?