OCM · division dropping · data S65–S78
How does a Div 3 team win a Div 8 classic without wrecking its riders' RS? Westbay never stops racing. They stop scoring.
Westbay Ninjas sit in Div 3. About fifteen days ago they won a Div 8 classic, then a run of Div 7 and Div 6 races, and they were back in Div 3 within two weeks. You'd expect a team has to sit idle for a season to fall that far, and that its riders' RS would be wrecked by then.
Short answer: they don't sit out at all, and their RS is close to maxed. Your division comes from your rolling 90-day points. Westbay race in Div 3 all season and score almost nothing there. Their whole ranking rests on one burst of lower-division wins. Ninety days later that burst expires all at once, and the team falls through five divisions in a week.
Our division records start at S65, and they show Westbay making 11 drops since then, about one every 105 days.
Three game rules do all the work.
1. Division = world rank, and world rank = the last 90 days. Points older than 90 days simply vanish from the ranking. A team whose points all came in one fortnight loses them all in one fortnight.
| Div | World rank | Div | World rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1–50 | 5 | 260–340 |
| 2 | 50–110 | 6 | 340–440 |
| 3 | 110–180 | 7 | 440–550 |
| 4 | 180–260 | 8 | 550–670 |
2. You sign up about 8 days ahead, at your division on that day. A team that has just fallen to Div 8 can enter a week's worth of Div 8 races. By the time the results lift it back up, it's already in all of them.
3. The calendar never changes. The same classics and tours run in the same division on the same day every season, so a team can plan the drop around a race it wants.
Rolling 90-day points, S76–S78, one team per panel, all on the same scale. Hover or tap for the division on any day. Each team's points move in a distinct pattern.
The forum calls it "division dropping" (or "division doping"). Our data shows three distinct styles.
This is Westbay's style. The team races every season, scores almost nothing in Div 2–4, and lets the 90-day clock drop it to the bottom. One full loop takes about 105 days: 90 days for the points to expire plus a couple of weeks to fall and climb back. So the drop arrives 15–20 days later each season and works its way around the calendar, now and then skipping a season entirely (Westbay: S66 d71, S67 d88, then nothing until S69 d20, S70 d39, S71 d51…). Their riders race all season, so RS stays high.
| Team | Manager | Drops S65–78 | Usual swing | Latest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EkerSvarvarna | Piskan | 12 | 3/4 → 8 | S78 d81 |
| Chess | Vadim | 11 | 3/4 → 7/8 | S78 d64 |
| New Guinea Islanders | Papa Guinea | 11 | 3 → 7/8 | S78 d10 |
| Westbay Ninjas | Christofer Johansson | 11 | 3 → 8 | S78 d68 |
| Pupsiki | Mamka | 10 | 2–4 → 7/8 | S77 d85 |
| Planet Bikes | Ryderman | 8 | 3–5 → 8 | S78 d7 |
| Locos | Digo | 7 | 3 → 7/8 | S74 d33 · stopped |
| Storm Sandefjord | Batlen | 6 | 3 → 7/8 | S75 d20 · stopped |
| Canadian Nippon | Robert Bouchard | 3 | 2/3 → 7 | S77 d69 |
A "drop" here is a fall of at least three divisions and a climb of at least three back, each within 30 days. A drop that crosses a season boundary counts once. The records cover S65 d83 to S78 d89.
This is the style most people picture. Australian Warlord (Rustgold) sit out whole seasons, so the ranking empties and they sink to the bottom. Then they enter everything for a week in the lowest division open to them and win a stack of races. In S77 their rolling points went from nothing to 480 in the week up to d41, carrying them from Div 7 to Div 5. Then nothing, until the points expired exactly 90 days later.
| Season | Points | Wins | Season | Points | Wins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S66 | 644 | 7 | S71 | 120 | 2 |
| S67 | 0 | 0 | S72–S76 | 0 | 0 |
| S68 | 523 | 8 | S77 | 480 | 8 |
| S69 | 154 | 2 | S78 | 0 | 0 |
Here RS really does bottom out. Their riders are at RS 30–51 (30 is the floor) with full DP (86–99), and their best riders average 30–39. That's below a typical Div 7 team, whose top eight average 36.6. It doesn't matter much in fields that thin. Rustgold says as much:
As a former divisional dopper (note I didn't do it with a top tier team - I was DP dopping 30av cyclists at the same time)…
Australian Warlord (Rustgold), forum, "On racing in lower division", Dec 2020
Some teams time their ranking around a single Div 7 stage race each year. Tours run on the same days every season, so the team only needs to be ranked low enough when signup opens.
| Team | Target | When | Record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jenica (ISK, Serbia) | El Tocororo (Cuba, Div 7) | d77–79 | Won the GC in S75, S76 and S78, with 1-2-3 on every stage in S76. 8 El Tocororo jerseys on their palmarès. |
| Gyne2 (Madagascar) | Tour of the Sanreizan (Japan, Div 7) | d33–38 | Won the GC in S75 and S77, plus nearly every stage. 4 Sanreizan jerseys. |
One tour is most of their season, so their points swing hard from one season to the next (Jenica S74–S78: 578, 254, 699, 8, 667). In S77, the one year they missed, they were still ranked Div 5 when signup opened.
These are the races that award trophies and jerseys.
„division dopers" usually win the tours, cups and classics, so all races that give jerseys and trophies.
Goege Team (Goege), forum, Dec 2020
| Team | Palmarès |
|---|---|
| Westbay Ninjas | Trophies: Giro di Vicenza, Zell am See, Gevelsberg GP, Budapest Meeting Point, Brebes. Winner Silver (+250 race wins). 23 national titles, mostly with riders from small nations (Central African Republic ×7, Somalia ×5, Lesotho ×3). |
| New Guinea Islanders | Trophies: Zell am See, Giro di Vicenza, Entrecasteaux GP, Draguignan, Gevelsberg GP. Conquest for Provence. Winner Bronze (+100). |
| EkerSvarvarna | Trophies: Classico di Siracusa, Orel-Kursk Classic, Alpe d'Huez Classic. Winner Bronze. |
| Australian Warlord | Trophies: Zell am See, Uttendorf. 3 World Championship ITT jerseys. Winner Bronze. |
| Jenica | 11 tour jerseys (El Tocororo, El Corazón de México). Zell am See. Stage Performer Bronze. |
Zell am See appears on four of these five palmarès lists. Prize money is another reason: low-division races pay out well for the field they draw. In 2018 Rustgold wrote that oldtimers considered them "the godfather of all the legal money dopping schemes".
It's legal, and we found no rule against it in the forum record. Opinions are split.
…teams that willingly relegate to one of the lowest divisions, to find some results without resistance, bringing a lot of money to the table. They sign up for 9 races (using busdrivers) in the lowest divisions possible… Its smart and legit but frowned upon by a part of the community…
Silenzio (The Erwinator), forum, Dec 2020
Dropping down all the way to Div8/9 was a problem (hardly done nowadays, so not sure if it's still a problem), because it really is stealing candy from starting teams… Dropping down to Div2/3 is not comparable to that…
Schiavi di Don (Don Hamstre, admin), "Semi-Classic Series" thread, Aug 2021
Every drop on this page came after that post. Our records start at S65 (early 2023), and since then the five busiest Yoyos alone have made 55 trips down to Div 7–8.