Cycling at the Olympics
Cycling is a core Olympic sport, and one of five sports that has been contested at every summer Olympic Games since 1896. The other core sports are: Athletics, Fencing, Gymnastics and Swimming.
Four Disciplines
There are currently four disciplines in Olympic cycling: track cycling, road cycling, mountain-bike and BMX. BMX was the latest to be added to the Olympic program, in 2008.
Current Olympic Cycling Events
Here are the 22 cycling event that will be part of the Olympic program in 2020. The year that each event was first on the program is listed.
- 1000m Sprint Men — 1906 to current
- 1000m Sprint Women — 1988 to current
- Team Pursuit Men — 1908, 1920 to current
- Team Pursuit Women — 2012 to current
- Keirin Men — 2000 to current
- Keirin Women — 2012 to current
- Madison Men — 2000-08, 2020
- Madison Women — 2020
- Omnium Men — 2012 to current
- Omnium Women — 2012 to current
- Team sprint Men — 2000 to current
- Team sprint Women — 2012 to current
track cycling- Individual Road Race Men — 1896 to current
- Individual Road Race Women — 1984 to current
- Individual Road Time Trial Men — 1996 to current
- Individual Road Time Trial Women — 1996 to current
Mountain Bike event. There is a men's and women's cross country event. In each of these, the competitors start at the same time and complete laps of a closed off-road course for about 2 hours. The first athlete to cross the finish line after a set number of laps wins.
- Cross-country Men — 1996 to current
- Cross-country Women — 1996 to current
- BMX Individual Men — 2008 to current
- BMX Individual Women — 2008 to current
- BMX Freestyle Men — 2020+
- BMX Freestyle Women — 2020+
Trivia
- Cycling has been part of the Olympic Games since the beginning of the modern era.
- Track racing has been held at all Olympic Games except for 1912 in Stockholm, when only a road race event was held. This road race was the longest race of any kind ever in Olympic history, held over a distance of 320km (199 miles), the winner finishing in 10 hours 42 minutes.
- In Rome 1960, after taking amphetamines, Danish cyclist Knuth Jensen collapsed during a race, fatally fracturing his skull. The official cause of death was heat stroke.
- Tandem Cycling is a discontinued track cycling event at the Olympics, though tandem cycling is an event at the Paralympics.
- East German athlete Christa Rothenburger won a silver medal in track cycling in Seoul in 1988. Seven months earlier she had won the women's 1000 meter speed skating event at the Winter Olympics in Calgary. She became the first and only athlete to win medals in both a Summer and Winter Olympics in the same year.
- In 1984, women were admitted to Olympic cycling with the inclusion of a single road race.
- In 2008 in Beijing, representing Australia in BMX cycling was a rider called Kamakazi, who had changed his name from Jamie Hildebrandt by deed poll.
- The best all-time performing cyclist at the Olympic Games is British cyclists Jason Kenny, who has won seven gold medals and two silvers. The top female cyclist is six-time medalist (five of which is gold) Laura Kenny (nee Trott) also from Great Britain. See more on the Greatest Cyclists at the Olympics.
- US cyclist Lance Armstrong was stripped of the bronze medal he won in Sydney 2000 in the cycling road time trial taken, after being found guilty of systematic drug cheating from 1999-2005.
- The 2012 Summer Olympics were the first at which men and women competed in the same number of events in all cycling disciplines.
Related Pages
- See also the list of discontinued Olympic cycling events.
- There is more information about the sport of Cycling
- See more on the Greatest Cyclist at the Olympics.
- See also information about cycling at the Commonwealth Games.
- Tandem cycling event at the Olympics, and more discontinued Olympic cycling events.
- Cycling at the Paralympics
- List of Olympic Sports
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