Cycling at the 2024 Summer Olympics: disciplines, where and when the races will take place

On 26 July, the Summer Olympics in Paris will begin. The Dailysports team introduces you to cycling sports: BMX racing, mountain biking and road racing.

Cycling at the 2024 Summer Olympics: which disciplines?

If we separate out track racing (which we have told you about separately), cycling will be represented by five disciplines in men and women. These are mostly races, but there is one event that stands out among them.

This is freestyle BMX. Here it is not the time that is evaluated, but the score that will be given to the participant by the judges.

Cycling, disciplines:

• BMX freestyle
• BMX racing
• Mountain bike racing
• Group and individual road races

Cycling at the 2024 Summer Olympics: who will compete?

In all disciplines, except BMX freestyle racing, places were allocated according to the International Cycling Union (UCI) world ranking, as well as at continental tournaments. Redistribution of vouchers has also happened.

In BMX freestyle, the participants were determined according to the results of qualification series, as well as the World Championship.

It should be noted that the tickets were not named, i.e. even if a rider won the right to participate in the Olympics in an individual race, the National Olympic Committee of a particular country independently decided who would participate in the Games.

Cycling at the 2024 Summer Olympics: when and where will the races be held?

Cycling competitions will take place throughout the Games, namely from 27 July to 11 August. The BMX, mountain bike and road races will be the first to take place.

They will occupy the first half of the games, namely from 27 July to 4 August. The road and mountain bike races will start right from the finals. Separate road races will be held on 27 July, while group races will be held on 3 August for men and 4 for women.

The finals of the men's and women's mountain bike races will take place on 28 and 29 July respectively, with the BMX races taking up most of the time. The races start on 1 August with the quarter-finals and will finish the following day.

In freestyle, the finals will take place as early as 31 July.

The road races will take place on the Jena Bridge, the BMX races on the National Velodrome, the mountain bike races on Elancourt Hill and the BMX freestyle will take place on the Place de la Concorde, which will also host the breakdancing competition we told you about earlier.

The history of cycling at the Olympic Games

Cycling was immediately included in the Olympic programme after its revival in 1896. At that time, the Games included an individual track sprint and an individual road race. Soon more and more events were included in the programme.

But it was all men's races. The first women's race, which was the road individual race, only appeared in 1984. The programme then expanded and now has six different types as well as five track races.

The last major change came at the previous Tokyo Games when BMX freestyle was included. Racing on these bikes was also included in the programme relatively recently, at the Beijing Games in 2008.

It is noteworthy that the hosts of the current Olympics, the French, are the most successful in cycling, with 41 gold medals. But the British are the best in terms of the sum of all awards, with exactly one hundred medals.