Paris 1868's wooden bike race launched competitive cycling
Cycle sport covers road, track, cyclo-cross, mountain, BMX, and more. The first popularly cited race ran 1,200 m at Paris's Parc de Saint-Cloud on 31 May 1868, won by Englishman James Moore on wood and solid rubber. The UCI formed 14 April 1900; cycling has been Olympic every Summer Games since 1896.
European heartlands include Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands; Australia and Britain also punch above. Non-racing arts add cycle polo and trials. Governing rows with Britain helped birth the UCI from the older International Cycling Association of 1892.
Road racing runs from spring to autumn, spanning one-day races, criteriums, time trials and the three-week Grand Tours of France, Italy and Spain; many northern riders spend the winter in Australia. Track racing, on wooden indoor tracks since about 1870, is held year-round on banked velodromes with bikes that have neither brakes nor freewheels. Cyclo-cross began as off-season training for road riders, with a September-to-January season on 2–3 km laps of pavement, grass, trails and obstacles. Cycle speedway uses short outdoor dirt tracks of 70 to 90 metres, and keirin and motor-paced races put riders behind motorcycles for extra speed.
Mountain biking splits into cross-country, enduro, downhill and four-cross, while BMX riders sprint single laps of dirt jumps and banked turns on single-gear bikes. Gravel racing is a twenty-first-century arrival, with Unbound Gravel dating from 2006. Speeds peak indoors: in Mexico in 2013 François Pervis averaged 77 km/h over a flying 200 metres. Beyond racing come artistic cycling, performed like gymnastics; cycle ball, played two-a-side with bike and head; trials, where riders must never dab a foot and world championships began in 1986; and cycle polo, a demonstration sport at the 1908 London Olympics.
Source: Cycle sport
