Written by KrMees of Velosipedska
  
  Greetings to all, welcome to my second ever statistical preview for the Race of the Minutemen! Let’s take a look at the participants and what the stats have to say about this edition of the American tour. I tried to include every team, so 20/24 teams are mentioned by name, and riders from those other 4 teams are mentioned in the article.
  
  Team Participations:
  Appearance record holder BCTeam will make their 23d appearance at the American stage race. The Italian squad is the only team to have participated in over half of the 42 editions of RotM so far.
  BCTeam’s first raced RotM during edition #7, when Elia Vallejo finished 9th in GC. Nari Iacone won the YC for BCTeam in edition #10, finishing 9th that season and 7th in edition #11.
  BCTeam’s best RotM GC result is 6th: Salvino Salgada in edition #13 and Ejvind Martinsen in edition #33. Martinsen is also at RotM this season.
  PtbaGooner and Tashkent Browncoats (both 10, +1) are the only other teams in the current edition with at least 10 previous participations at RotM.
  PtbaGooner made their debut at edition #21. Their best RotM performance was a 4th place by Gard Børresen in edition #38, that gave him the YC win that year. Børresen is now 30 years old, and present at this edition of RotM.
  Tashkent Browncoats made their debut at edition #26. Erazm D?bski’s third place at edition #33 is the best GC result for the Browncoats at RotM.
  rooney17 was the earliest of the current teams to participate in RotM: Dirk Veldkamp finished 11th in edition #4. Barthélémy Besse would be rooney17’s first and only RotM winner in edition #29.
  1 2 Cycle, Alx4475, Burgos Hurricanes and Spliff cycling will all be making their debuts at RotM this edition. The remaining 17 teams have raced at RotM 1 to 6 times before.
  
  Rider Participations:
   Que Nam Hong (1st), Kenn Beierholm (3d), Jordan Spirkoski (4th, YC) and Ernst Reiswig (9th) are the 4 riders from last edition’s top-9 who are present again this season.
   Danilo Mazza’s team FretexHIBAS is present, but the squad decided to leave last year’s 6th-placed GC rider at home this time.
   Que Nam Hong could become the first RotM rider to win three editions of the race. If Hong does that, he’d even do it in consecutive editions. Last season, he became the 7th rider to win RotM twice.
  Apart from Hong, only Valentín Kuzma has ever won RotM out of the present line-up. This year’s Monte Rosa winner took the RotM GC for Lokomotíva Zvolen in edition #40.
   Kenn Beierholm is the only other rider present who has a podium place at RotM under his belt (3d last season).
   Ejvind Martinsen (BCTeam) and Rafa? Figura (Tashkent Browncoats) will both be racing their 5th RotM, most of all riders this edition.
  Martinsen’s best result is a 6th place (3d YC) in edition #34. The 35-year-old has not had a result for himself in the past four seasons.
  Figura finished 12th in edition #39 and is usually more suited to the Canadian Edmonton Red Deer Tour, where he won a stage this season.
  The only other 2 riders with at least 3 previous participations are Gard Børresen (YC win in edition #38) and Rado Hole?ko (Norway Tour, Tian-Shen Stone City Cup winner, best rider outside top division in S56).
  Out of the 138 riders at this tour, 100 have not finished an edition of RotM in their careers.
  
  *There’s a cutoff at around 11 minutes where riders aren’t listed anymore in historical editions. I treat these at DNF. Some riders might have a few more appearances, but you have to be listed to be known*
  
  Nationality:
  There are more Canadians (2) than Americans (1) present at this year’s RotM.
  Just like last year, Dwayne Chamberlain will be the single American racing RotM this year. Also just like last year, perhaps we can count US Virgin Islands resident Igor

Perlee for the home team as well?
  The Vikings have discovered the New World, with 17 Danish riders representing the largest contingent of any nation at this year’s RotM. They are followed by 10 Spaniards, 7 Italians and 7 Slovaks.
  Alx4475 (Spain), Lokomotíva Zvolen (Slovakia), Team Specialized Cycling (Denmark), Universal Soup (Vietnam) and Velosipedska (Macedonia) represent only a single nation this season. Specialized employs non-Danish riders, but entered RotM with 6 Danes.
  All present riders from Vietnam and Macedonia are riding for these one-nation teams.
  Matrix Team’s Ronald Hor?ák is the only Slovak who is not riding for Lokomotíva Zvolen.
  Bank Lux, Columbiero, Flanders Fields, Korstanje, MOVISTAR KELME TEAM, PtbaGooner and Spliff cycling all field riders from 6 different countries.
  Out of the teams mentioned above, MOVISTAR KELME TEAM are the only outfit without a single rider from the team’s country in the line-up, so they even represent 7 different nations in this tour. The 4 Swedes in the race are riding for Burgos Hurricanes, Flanders Fields and FretexHIBAS.
  
  Rider Skills:
  Lokomotíva Zvolen (50.5 AV), MOVISTAR KELME TEAM (50.5 AV), and Matrix Team (50.3 AV) bring the highest averages to America this season.
  Last season, Abs stars was the third-highest AV team with 48.7, but this year their 45.8 AV is only the 14th-highest of the 24 teams.
   Amiral Libumdi (56.25) is the highest AV rider at the race, followed by Rado Hole?ko (56.0) and Ernst Reiswig (55.875).
  The riders above are the only riders with a rounded 56 AV rating at RotM. For comparison, 4 riders with 57 AV are riding the Perm Tour at the time of writing.
   Brendon Manohara (34) is the lowest AV rider at the race, at least 3 points in AV behind any other participant. Still, the Sri Lankan’s 82 CL should prove to be useful.
  Every rider at Burgos Hurricanes has between 46 and 51 AV. This is the lowest spread (6 points) within a team at this season’s RotM.
  As always, Bank Lux (90.3) field the highest average CL team in the race. Last season, that mountain goat mentality resulted in a 9th place (but presumably a fictional mountain jersey for one of them).
  Korstanje’s Bruno Ørtoft (304) has 134 skill points fewer than teammate John Meldgaard (438). That’s 16.75 points fewer per OCM skill, the biggest difference between any teammates at RotM.
  Flanders Fields truly bring the sprint team to America, their average of 33 CL is 10 points below any other team. Out of the 7 weakest climbers at the race, 3 ride for FF ( Sonny Fors, Ludo Hynek and Kilby Proper).
   Jean de Dieu Nyirabarame (77) is has the lowest sum of CL (27), DH (25) and HL (25) at the race this edition.
  
  Rider Ages:
  Like last year (34.5), Korstanje entered the race with the oldest squad: 34.2 on average.
  Three teams have a lower average age than Korstanje’s youngest rider ( Lennart Walstad, 26)...
  ...these youngest teams this year are rooney17 (23.3), Velosipedska (23.7) and Tashkent Browncoats (25.7).
  Velosipedska are the only team at the race with 5 riders who are eligible for the YC. Jovan Georgievski (25) is the exception, missing out on YC eligibility by only a year.
   Srgjan Pandev, the first Macedonian to ride RotM (S21, edition #13), rode his last race in S33, the season when Jovan Georgievski was born.
   Jesper Bjørklund (42), the oldest guy at this race, was racing at Critérium Lyon in his 2d year as a pro, 2 days before Brendon Manohara (20), the youngest rider at RotM, was born. Manohara was born on day 54 of S38, Bjørklund rode the Nederlandse Tour for NJ procycling that season.