Contador ends season as world number one

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Alberto Contador has spearheaded a dominant season for Spanish cycling after finishing on top of the International Cycling Union's (UCI) world rankings, announced on Monday. The Tour de France champion led a Spanish trio, with compatriots Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d'Epargne) and Samuel Sánchez (Euskaltel-Euskadi) taking second and third in the individual rankings, respectively. Contador's trade team Astana finished the season at the top of the team rankings, while Spain finished well clear of Italy as the top nation.

Contador's success this season helped him become the inaugural champion in the UCI's world ranking system. The new system was implemented as a replacement for the ProTour rankings, which due to disputes between race organisers and the UCI had last year, failed to incorporate results from any of the three Grand Tours, Milan-San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix or Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The revised UCI World Calendar ensured that the rankings announced today include results from those seven events.

Despite competing in just four of the 14 UCI World Calendar events in 2009, Contador's victories at the Tour de France and Vuelta Ciclista al Pais Vasco, and high finishes at Paris-Nice and the Dauphiné Libéré were enough to finish world number one. He finished with 527 points, 44 ahead of Vuelta a España winner Valverde (487 points) and 170 in front of Vuelta and Giro di Lombardia runner-up Sánchez (357 points).

Sánchez was one of the most prominent movers in the final world rankings. The Euskaltel rider moved from eighth to replace Andy Schleck in third place. Sánchez secured his position in the rankings with a second place finish in the final event on the UCI World Calendar, Saturday's Giro di Lombardia. The results of the Italian race also saw winner, Philippe Gilbert (Silence-Lotto), catapulted into the world top-10, from 20th to ninth place.

Grand Tour winning teams Astana and Caisse d'Epargne finished first and second in the team rankings, with Columbia-HTC finishing third. Silence-Lotto moved from eighth to sixth, by virtue of Cadel Evans' third place finish at the Vuelta and Gilbert's Lombardia win.

The efforts of their riders throughout the season saw Spain finished almost 800 points clear of Italy in the team rankings. Australian and Germany retained their positions in third and fourth, respectively. Gilbert's Lombardia triumph was enough to see Belgium replace Russia in fifth place.

The following are the final UCI World Rankings for 2009: