Road Cycling
Road Bicycle Racing
Road Race Types
Road Race Tactics
Road Racing Teams
Track Cycling
Track Cycling Riding position
Track Cycling Race Formats
Track Cycling records
Road cycling
Is the most widespread form of cycling. It takes place primarily on paved surfaces. It includes recreational, racing, and utility cycling. Experienced road cyclists generally obey the same rules and laws as other vehicle drivers.
There are many types of bikes that are used on the roads, from BMX bikes through to high end road bikes with the road bicycle being the most common type.
Bikes are usually made from one of four different materials. These are steel, aluminium, titanium, and carbon fibre. Throughout the world the most commonly used material is steel as it is relatively cheap, strong and is much easier to repair than the other materials that can be used.
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Road bicycle racing
A popular bicycle racing sport held on roads using racing bicycles. The term 'road racing' is usually applied to events where competing riders start simultaneously with the winner being the first at the end of the course (individual and team time trials are another form of cycle racing on roads).
Road bicycle racing began as an organized sport in 1868. The first world championship was in 1893 and cycling has been part of the Olympic Games since the modern sequence started in Athens in 1896.
Road racing in its modern form originated in the late 19th century. Some of Europe's earliest road bicycle races remain among the sport's marquee events. These early races include Liège-Bastogne-Liège (established 1892), Paris-Roubaix (1896), the Tour de France (1903), the Milan-Sanremo and Giro di Lombardia (1905), the Giro d'Italia (1909) and the Ronde van Vlaanderen (1913). They provided a template for other races around the world. While the sport has spread throughout the world, these historic races remain the most prestigious for a cyclist to win.
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Road race types
Single-day races
The first competitor to cross the finish line after completing the prescribed course is declared the winner. Race distances vary from a few kilometres to more than 200 km.
Courses may run from place to place or comprise one or more laps of a circuit; some courses combine both. Races over short circuits are known as criteriums.
Some races, known as handicaps, are designed to match riders of different abilities and/or ages; groups of slower riders start first, with the fastest riders starting last and so having to race harder and faster to catch other competitors.
Single-day Nocturnal races
Nocturnal races are an attempt to bring in larger crowds. A good example of this is the Shropshire Star Newport Nocturne, which is Britain's only floodlit cycle race.
Stage races
Consists of several races - 'stages' - ridden consecutively. The competitor with the lowest cumulative time to complete all the stages is declared the overall, or General Classification (GC), winner.
Stage races may also have other classifications and awards, such as individual stage winners, the points classification winner, and the "King of the Mountains" (or Mountains classification) winner.
A stage race can also be a series of road races and individual time trials (some events include team time trials).
The stage winner is the first person to cross the finish line that day or the time trial rider (or team) with the lowest time on the course.
The overall winner of a stage race is the rider who takes the lowest aggregate time to complete all stages (accordingly, a rider does not have to win all or any of the individual stages to win overall).
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Road Race Tactics
Though the objective of a race is quite simple - to be the first rider to cross the line - a number of tactics are employed. They are based on the benefit of riding in the slipstream of another rider and thus making it possible to save a considerable amount of energy.
A group that breaks away from the main field, bunch or peloton, has more space and freedom and can therefore be at an advantage in certain situations. A small group of riders can work together smoothly and efficiently to maintain a higher speed than the peloton, where the remaining riders may not be as motivated or organized to chase effectively. Usually a rider or group of riders will try to break from the peloton by attacking and riding ahead to reduce the number of riders competing for the win. If the break doesn't succeed, and the body of cyclists comes back together, the winner will often be a sprinter. Teamwork between riders (both pre-arranged and ad-hoc) is important in many aspects: to prevent a break from getting away, helping riders in a break get clear of the bunch, and sometimes in delivering a sprinter to the front of the field.
Races often feature difficult sections such as tough climbs, fast descents, and sometimes technical surfaces to make the course more selective. Stronger riders will be able to drop weaker riders during such sections to reduce the number of direct competitors able to take the win. In order to be successful, riders must develop excellent bike handling skills in order to be able ride at high speeds in close quarters with other riders. Individual riders can approach speeds of 110 km/h while descending winding mountain roads and may reach speeds of 60-80 km/h during the final sprint to the finish line.
In more organized races there is a bus (the Broom waggon) that follows the race, picking up stragglers.
In all road racing, drafting is a very important concept whereby one rider can save a lot of effort by closely following the rider in front in order to stay in his slipstream. Riding in a peloton can save as much as 40% of the energy employed in forward motion when compared to riding in the wind. Some teams will designate a leader, while the rest of the team is charged with keeping that rider out of the wind and in a good position until a critical section of the race. This can be used as a strength or a weakness by competitors; riders can cooperate and draft each other to ride at high speed (a paceline or echelon), or one rider can sit on a competitor's wheel, forcing him to do a greater share of the work to maintain the pace and potentially tiring earlier. Drafting may not be employed in a time trial, unless it is a team time trial.
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Road Racing Teams
While the principle remains of the winner being the first to cross the line, many of the riders are grouped together in teams, usually with commercial sponsors. On professional and semi-professional teams, names are typically synonymous with the primary sponsors. The size of the team varies, from 3 in an amateur event for club riders to a 12 in professional races.
Team riders decide between themselves, before and during the race, which has the best chance of winning. The choice will depend on hills, the chances that the whole field will finish together in a sprint, and other factors. The rest of the team will devote itself to promoting its leader's chances, taking turns into the wind for him, refusing to chase with the peloton when he escapes, and so on.
In professional races, team coordination is performed by radio communication between the riders and the team director, who travels following the riders in a team car and monitors the overall race situation. The influence of radios on race tactics is sometimes a topic of discussion amongst cycling enthusiasts, with some arguing that the introduction of radios in the 1990s has devalued the tactical knowledge of individual riders and has led to less exciting racing.
The main specialities in road bicycle racing are:
• Climber
• Time trialist
• Sprinter
• Domestique
• All-rounder
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Road Racing Season
In its home in Europe and in the United States, cycle racing on the road is a summer sport, although the season can start in early spring and end in autumn. The months of the season depend on the hemisphere. A racing year is divided between lesser races, single-day classics and stage races.
The classics include the Ronde van Vlaanderen, Paris-Roubaix and Milan-Sanremo. The other important one-day race is the World Championships. Unlike other classics, the World Championships is held on a different course each year and ridden by national rather than sponsored teams. The winner wears a white jersey with coloured bands (often called "rainbow bands") around the chest.
In Australia, due to the relatively mild winters and hot summers, the amateur road racing season runs from the southern autumn to spring through the winter months, while criterium races are held in the mornings or late afternoons during the summer months. Some professional events, including the Tour Down Under, are held in the southern summer, mainly to avoid clashing with the major northern hemisphere races and allowing top professionals to compete.
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Track Cycling
Track cycling is a bicycle racing sport usually held on specially-built banked tracks or velodromes (but many events are held at older velodromes where the track banking is relatively shallow) using track bicycles.
Track racing is also done on grass tracks marked out on flat sportsfields.
Track Cycling Riding position
The bicycles are designed to reduce aerodynamic drag caused by the machine itself and the rider's racing position.
Handlebars on track bikes used for longer events such as the points race are similar to the drop bars found on road bicycles. The riding position is also similar to the road racing position.
In the sprint event the rider's position is more extreme compared with a road rider. The bars are lower and the saddle is higher and more forward. Bars are often narrower with a deeper drop. Steel bars are still used by many sprinters for their higher rigidity and durability.
In timed events such as the pursuit and the kilo, riders often use aerobars or 'triathlon bars' similar to those found on road time trial bicycles, allowing the rider to position the arms closer together in front of the body. This results in a more horizontal back and presents the minimum frontal area to reduce drag. Aerobars can be separate bars that are attached to time trial or bull horn bars, or they can be part of a one-piece monocoque design. Use of aerobars is permitted only in pursuit and time trial events.
Formats of track cycle races are also heavily influenced by aerodynamics. If one rider closely follows, they draft or slipstream another, because the leading rider pushes air around themselves; any rider closely following has to push out less air than the lead rider and thus can travel at the same speed while expending less effort. This fact has led to a variety of racing styles that allow clever riders or teams to exploit this tactical advantage, as well as formats that simply test strength, speed and endurance.
Track Cycling Race Formats
Track cycling events fit into two broad categories, Sprint races and Endurance races. Riders will fall into one category and not compete in the other. Riders with good all round ability in the junior ranks will decide to focus on one area or another before moving up to the senior ranks.
Sprint races are generally between 3 and 8 laps in length and focus on raw sprinting power over a small number of laps and race tactics to defeat opponents. Sprint riders will train specifically to compete in races of this length and will not compete in longer endurance races.
Main Sprint Events
• Sprint
• Team sprint
• Keirin
• Track time trial
Endurance races are held over much longer distances. While these primarily test the riders endurance abilities, the ability to sprint effectively is also required in the Madison, Points Race and Strach Race. The length of these races varies from 12 - 16 laps for the Individual and Team Pursuit races, right up to 200 laps for a full length Madison race in World Championships or Olympic Games.
Main Endurance Events
• Individual pursuit
• Team pursuit
• Scratch race
• Points race
• Madison
• Omnium
• Handicap
• Miss and Out, elimination or 'Devil Take the Hindmost'
Track Cycling records
In addition to regular track racing, tracks are also the venue for many cycling records. These are over either a fixed distance or for a fixed period of time. The most famous of these is the hour record, which involves simply riding as far as possible in one hour.
Originally, attempts were made at velodromes with reputations for being fast (such as the Velodromo Vigorelli in Milan). More recently, attempts have moved to high-altitude locations, such as Mexico City, where the thinner air results in lower aerodynamic drag, which more than offsets the added difficulty of breathing. Innovations in equipment and the rider's position on the bike have also led to dramatic improvements in the hour record, but have also been a source of controversy.