Cycling 101

Now that our training has progressed to a level where we are actually studying the cycling athletes' profiles, I figured it might be time to let you guys know a little about the world of track, BMX and mountain cycling Olympic events. Once the Olympics start, a lot of my blogs will concern these athletes, so a quick primer might help everyone understand.

This blog will mostly concern track cycling, which includes several different kinds of racing. There are races called sprints, pursuits, the points race, the madison and the keirin. Men ride the sprint, the team sprint, the pursuit, the team pursuit, the madison and the keirin, while women only ride the sprint, the pursuit and the points race.

The bikes these athletes ride are like the ferraris of the bicycle world, weighing little enough that you can lift them with your pinky, and they run on only a single gear. This means that, unlike normal bikes, the pedals must move with the wheels, and to stop pedaling while moving will end with the rider pitching over the handlebars. The size of the gears can be altered depending on the race and rider preference, but the general rule is that sprint riders have larger gears than endurance riders, leading to the sprint riders having to really push at the start to get the bike moving.

Some of the favorites for these Olympics hail mostly from European countries, with the British team pursuit riders looking dominant, while Dutch rider Theo Bos may take the individual pursuit and sprint titles. For the women, the U.S.'s Sarah Hammer comes back to cycling after several years of taking a break from competitions, and Britain's Victoria Pendleton and Rebecca Romero have strong performances leading up to the Olympics that could lead to success in the games.

One of the more spectacular stories in these games will be American Taylor Phinney, the youngest rider in these games and probably the greatest thing to happen to American cycling in the past, well, ever. He will only compete in the individual pursuit in the Beijing games and is not favored to win a medal, but if he makes it into the top six of the pursuit, he'll be set up to be a favorite in the London games. He's a great story because his mother won a gold medal at the 1984 games. His father was also a star road cyclist, but now has recently undergone surgery for parkinson's disease. If Phinney has any kind of success in these games, look for him to be as big as Michael Phelps in a few years.