Road Cycling at 2008 Summer Games: Road cycling is the most popular discipline among those included in the cycling event. In the road cycling race is held on the paved surfaces. The sport event became popular in the later half of the nineteenth century. Men have been participating in the event since the early days of the sport. However, women started contesting in the event second half of the twentieth century. Road cycling is popular all over the world, but the sport is extremely famous in the European countries. The Union Cyclist Internationale or the UCI is the governing body of the event at the international level.
Road cycling in the Summer Games: Men's road cycling event was included in the very first modern Olympics at the 1896 Athens Games. All most a century later women started contesting in the road race event at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. The time trial event fro women was introduced to the Olympics much later in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. At present, men and women both contest in the individual road race and individual time trial events.
Categories of Road Cycling: Road cycling can be divided into two categories on the basis of the length of the race. These categories are-
According to the race types, the road cycling event can be divided into various categories.
The major categories are-
Rules of Road Cycling: The Union Cyclist Internationale or the UCI has set rules for the road cycling event. Some of the rules followed at the international road cycling competitions are-
Medal winners in Road Cycling: Paolo Bettini, Sergio Miguel Moreira Paulinho, Axel Merckx, Tyler Hamilton, Jan Ullrich, Pascal Richard, Fabio Casartelli, Alexander Vinokourov, Rolf Sorensen, Andreas Kloden, Viatcheslav Vladimirovich Ekimov and Miguel Indurain are some of the leading cyclists in the field of road cycling at the international level.
Sara Carrigan, Judith Arndt, Olga Slyusareva, Leontien van Moorsel, Jeannie Longo, Kathy Watt, Hanka Kupfernagel, Connie Carpenter-Phinney, Zulfiya Zabirova, Dede Barry, Mari Holden and Clara Hughes are some of the leading female cyclists at the international level.
