Introducing The ORI Ranking Engine
Finally, A Scoreboard for Off-Road Racing
If you ask five fans who the top gravel racers are, you’d get five different answers. Off-road racing doesn't have a ranking system like most other cycling disciplines do. Instead, it has hundreds of results across dozens of race websites that don't talk to each other – no single number that says who's actually at the top of the sport. We all know the athletes with large followings and the athletes that win the big races, but plenty of riders worth watching – sometimes the ones beating strong fields without the follower count or sponsor deck to get noticed – get lost in the noise. Off Road Index's answer is the ORI Score a single number ranking racers across the entire sport.
The mechanics. The ORI Ranking Engine objectively scores athletes based on who they raced, rather than just where they finished. Every athlete starts a ranking period at a baseline of 1000. From there, each ORI-graded race is scored as the season progresses: your rating is compared against every other finisher's rating to produce an expected result. Then your actual result is scored against a curve where first place is worth a flat 1.00 and every place after loses a sliding percentage of that — second is worth roughly 95% of a win, third around 90%, tenth around 63%. Overperform and your score rises; underperform and your score falls.
That single mechanism allows the ORI Ranking Engine to weigh the field strength automatically. A win against a pack of previously unrated athletes barely moves the needle. A top-ten finish in a field stacked with athletes who've already proven themselves moves it considerably.
Not every race counts the same. Events carry an ORI Grade — HC down to 4 — and that grade multiplies how much a result can move your score. A strong ride at an HC race counts eight times as much as the identical finish would count for at a Grade 4 race. Races are weighted based on historical field size, quality, and prominence in the off-road cycling landscape. Small fields are discounted too, scaling up to full weight only once a field is deep enough to mean something.
Three ways to read the same athlete. An athlete’s current score always reflects the last twelve months. YTD resets every January 1st, and calendar year rankings lock permanently once a season ends. Every version starts fresh at 1000 — none of them carry an athlete's history forward from the year before.
A minimum of five results required to be scored: an athlete needs at least five qualifying results in a period to be ranked at all, and only their best five count towards their score.
The ORI Score currently covers every race in the ORI database. Amateur scores coming soon! The full methodology — formulas included — is posted at offroadindex.co/rankings.