Road bicycle racing

Road bicycle racing is a discipline of cycle sport that takes place mainly on paved roads. It stands as the most widely followed professional form of bike racing, drawing the largest numbers of riders, events, and fans. The two main competition formats are mass start events, where everyone sets off together and races to a designated finish, and time trials, where solo riders or teams tackle a course individually, racing against the clock. Stage races, also called tours, span multiple days and are made up of a series of consecutive mass start or time trial stages.

Professional road racing began in Western Europe, with its heart in France, Spain, Italy, and the Low Countries. Since around the mid-1980s, the sport has spread globally, now featuring professional, semi-professional, and amateur races all over the world. The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) governs the sport. Alongside the UCI’s annual World Championships for both men and women, the most prominent event is the Tour de France, a three-week race that can draw more than 500,000 roadside spectators each day.

**History**

Modern road racing took shape in the late 1800s. It became an organized sport in 1868, with one of the earliest known races being Paris-Rouen. The sport thrived in Western European nations such as France, Spain, Belgium, and Italy, and several of those early road races remain among the biggest today. These include Liège–Bastogne–Liège (first run in 1892), Paris–Roubaix (1896), the Tour de France (1903), Milan–San Remo and Giro di Lombardia (1905), the Giro d’Italia (1909), the Volta a Catalunya (1911), and the Tour of Flanders (1913). These races set a pattern for events elsewhere. Cycling has been part of the Summer Olympic Games since the modern Olympics began in Athens in 1896.

From the early 1900s, the most competitive and dedicated nations were Belgium, France, and Italy. After World War II, road cycling spread to Colombia, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland. As the sport’s popularity has grown through globalization, countries like Kazakhstan, Australia, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Ecuador, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Poland, and the United States have also produced world-class cyclists. The first women’s road championships took place in France in 1951. A women’s road race discipline was added to the UCI Road World Championships at the 31st edition in 1958 in Reims.

**Road Race Types**

**One-day**

Professional one-day races can cover distances up to 180 miles (290 km). Courses may go from one place to another, consist of one or more laps of a circuit, or combine both—for example, starting at one point and finishing with several laps of a circuit (often to give spectators a better view of the finish). Short-circuit races, frequently held in town or city centers, are called criteriums.

**Time Trial**

In an individual time trial (ITT), cyclists race alone against the clock on flat or rolling terrain, or up a mountain road. A team time trial (TTT), including two-person team time trials, is a road race where teams of cyclists compete against the clock. In both formats, riders start at staggered times to ensure fairness. Unlike individual time trials, where drafting (riding in another rider’s slipstream) is not allowed, team time trials rely on this tactic, with each rider taking a turn at the front while teammates rest behind. Race distances range from a few kilometers (often a prologue—an individual time trial under 8 km (5 mi) before a stage race, used to decide who wears the leader’s jersey on the first stage) to between roughly 30 and 100 km (20 and 60 mi).

**Stage Races**

Stage races are made up of several races, or stages, run one after another. The rider with the lowest total time across all stages is the overall, or general classification (GC), winner. These races may also feature other classifications and awards, such as individual stage winners, a points classification winner, and a “King of the Mountains” (or mountains classification) winner. A stage race can include a mix of road races and individual time trials (some events also include team time trials). The stage winner is the first to cross the finish line that day, or the time trial rider (or team) with the fastest time on the course. The overall winner is the rider with the lowest aggregate time across all stages—meaning a rider does not have to win any individual stage to take the overall title. Three-week stage races are called Grand Tours. The professional road racing calendar includes three Grand Tours: the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France, and the Vuelta a España.

**Randonneuring and Ultra-distance**

Ultra-distance cycling races are very long single-stage events where the race clock runs continuously from start to finish. Their sanctioning bodies are usually independent of the UCI. These races often last several days, with riders taking breaks on their own schedules; the winner is the first to cross the finish line. One of the best-known ultramarathons is the Race Across America (RAAM), a coast-to-coast non-stop, single-stage race where riders cover roughly 4,800 km (3,000 mi) in about a week. RAAM is sanctioned by the Ultramarathon Cycling Association (UMCA). RAAM and similar events allow (and often require) racers to be supported by a team of staff. There are also ultra-distance races that forbid all external support, such as the Transcontinental Race and the Indian Pacific Wheel Race. The related activity of randonneuring is not strictly a form of racing.