An individual time trial (ITT) is a road bicycle race in which cyclists race alone against the clock. There are also track-based time trials where riders compete in velodromes, and team time trials (TTT). ITTs are also referred to as "the race of truth", as winning depends only on each rider's strength and endurance, and not on help provided by teammates and others riding ahead and creating a slipstream. Individual time trial are usually held on flat or rolling terrain, although sometimes they are held up a mountain road. Sometimes the opening stage of a stage race is a very short individual time trial called a prologue.
Michael Rogers is an Australian retired professional road bicycle racer who competed professionally between 1999 and 2016, for the Mapei–Quick-Step, Quick-Step–Innergetic, Team HTC–Columbia, Team Sky and Tinkoff teams. He is a three-time World Time Trial Champion, winning consecutively in 2003, 2004 and 2005, and won Grand Tour stages at the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia.
David Millar is a Scottish retired professional road racing cyclist. He rode for Cofidis from 1997 to 2004 and Garmin-Sharp from 2008 to 2014. He has won four stages of the Tour de France, five of the Vuelta a España and one stage of the Giro d'Italia. He was the British national road champion and the national time trial champion, both in 2007.
A time trialist is a road bicycle racer who can maintain high speeds for long periods of time, to maximize performance during individual or team time trials. The term cronoman, or chronoman, is also used to refer to a time trialist.
Sir Bradley Marc Wiggins, CBE is a British former professional road and track racing cyclist, who competed professionally between 2001 and 2016. He began his cycling career on the track, but later made the transition to road cycling. He won world titles in four disciplines, and Olympic gold in three. He is the only rider to have won both World and Olympic championships on both the track and the road as well as winning the Tour de France. He has worn the leader's jersey in each of the three Grand Tours of cycling and held the world record in team pursuit on multiple occasions. He won a gold medal at four successive Olympic Games from 2004 to 2016, and held the record as Great Britain's most decorated Olympian with 8 medals until Jason Kenny won his 9th in 2021. He is the only rider to win both the Tour de France and Olympic Gold in the same year, winning them a week apart in 2012. During his career and afterwards he faced a series of allegations that he exploited a loophole in cycling's anti-doping regulations to use a performance-enhancing drug, injections of the powerful corticosteroid, triamcinolone. He did not receive any bans or suspensions in relation to doping during his career.
British Cycling is the main national governing body for cycle sport in Great Britain. It administers most competitive cycling in Great Britain, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It represents Britain at the world body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) and selects national teams, including the Great Britain (GB) Cycling Team for races in Britain and abroad. As of 2020, it has a total membership of 165,000.
Tinkoff was a Russian-registered professional cycling team from Russia and previously Denmark. It competed in the UCI World Tour. The team was owned by Russian Oleg Tinkov and, from 1999 until March 2015, was managed by former Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis. The team was sponsored by the Russian Tinkoff Bank, a credit systems company.
Fabian Cancellara, nicknamed "Spartacus", is a Swiss cycling executive, businessman and former professional road racing cyclist who last rode for UCI ProTeam Trek–Segafredo. He was born in Wohlen bei Bern, Switzerland. Cancellara began road cycling after falling in love with an old bike at the age of thirteen. After that, he began to take the sport more seriously and won two consecutive World Junior Time Trial Championships in 1998 and 1999. At age nineteen he turned professional and signed with the Mapei–Quick-Step team, where he rode as a stagiaire. He is known for being a quality time trialist, a one-day classics specialist, and a workhorse for his teammates who have general classification aspirations.
Cervélo Cycles is a Canadian manufacturer of racing and track bicycles. Cervélo uses CAD, computational fluid dynamics, and wind tunnel testing at a variety of facilities including the San Diego Air and Space Technology Center, in California, US, to aid its designs. Frame materials include carbon fibre. Cervélo currently makes 5 series of bikes: the C series and R series of road bikes, the latter featuring multi-shaped, "Squoval" frame tubes; the S series of road bikes and P series of triathlon/time trial bikes, both of which feature airfoil shaped down tubes; and the T series of track bikes. In professional competition, cyclists have ridden Cervélo bicycles to victory in all of three of road cycling's grand tours: the Tour de France; the Giro d'Italia; and the Vuelta a España.
Matthew Harley Goss is a former Australian professional road and track racing cyclist, his final professional team before retirement was the UCI Professional Continental team ONE Pro Cycling. He first competed in track cycling before making a transition to the road. He earned a gold medal at the 2006 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in the Team Pursuit event and came in second place at the 2011 World Championships Road race. He also won the 2010 GP Ouest-France, the 2011 Milan–San Remo as well as 2 stages of the Giro d'Italia, among other victories.
Geraint Howell Thomas, is a Welsh professional racing cyclist who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Ineos Grenadiers, Wales and Great Britain. He is one of the few riders in the modern era to achieve significant elite success as both a track and road rider, with notable victories in the velodrome, in one-day racing and in stage racing. On the track, he has won three World Championships, and two Olympic gold medals, while on the road he won the 2018 Tour de France becoming the first Welshman and British-born rider to win it.
The men's individual time trial event at the UCI Road World Championships is the men's world championship for the road bicycle racing discipline of time trial. Introduced in 1994 by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the world's governing body of cycling, the event consists of a time trial covering a distance of approximately 45 kilometres (28 mi) over flat or rolling terrain. Riders start separated by two-minute intervals; the one that completes the course in the shortest time is the winner, and is entitled to wear the rainbow jersey in time trial events for the forthcoming season.
Tony Hans-Joachim Martin is a German former professional road bicycle racer. Martin was known as a time trial specialist, and is a four-time world champion in the discipline, having won the title in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2016, being one of two riders to be a four-time time trial world champion alongside Fabian Cancellara. He also won a silver medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, finishing runner-up to Bradley Wiggins in the event. Martin was also part of four world championship-winning team time trial squads, with Omega Pharma–Quick-Step/Etixx–Quick-Step, in 2012, 2013 and 2016, and with Germany in the mixed relay time-trial in 2021.
Christopher Clive Froome [kɹɪs fɹuːm], is a Kenyan/British road racing cyclist who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Israel–Premier Tech. He has won seven Grand Tours: four editions of the Tour de France, one Giro d'Italia (2018) and the Vuelta a España twice. He has also won several other stage races, and the Velo d'Or three times. Froome has also won two Olympic bronze medals in road time trials, in 2012 and 2016, and took bronze in the 2017 World Championships.
The Men's road time trial at the 2008 Summer Olympics took place on 13 August at the Urban Road Cycling Course. It was won by Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland.
Ineos Grenadiers is a British professional cycling team that competes at the UCI WorldTeam level. The team is based at the National Cycling Centre in Manchester, England, with a logistics base in Deinze, Belgium. The team is managed by British Cycling's former performance director, Sir Dave Brailsford. The company Tour Racing Ltd. is the corporate entity behind the team in all its iterations, which in line with cycling practice adopts the name of their current primary sponsor.
The 2012 Tour de France was the 99th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It started in the Belgian city of Liège on 30 June and finished on the Champs-Élysées in Paris on 22 July. The Tour consisted of 21 stages, including an opening prologue, and covered a total distance of 3,496.9 km (2,173 mi). As well as the prologue, the first two stages took place in Belgium, and one stage finished in Switzerland. Bradley Wiggins won the overall general classification, and became the first British rider to win the Tour. Wiggins's teammate Chris Froome placed second, and Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas–Cannondale) was third.
Trek–Segafredo is a professional road bicycle racing team at UCI WorldTeam level licensed in the United States. Formerly RadioShack–Nissan, in 2014, Trek took over the ownership of the team and its ProTeam License.
The men's road race, one of the cycling events at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, took place on 28 July at 10 a.m. in central and southwest London and north Surrey, starting and finishing on The Mall.
The 2012 season for Team Sky began in January at the Tour Down Under and ended in October at the Tour of Beijing. As a UCI ProTeam, they were automatically invited and obliged to send a squad to every event in the UCI World Tour. The team took a total of 47 victories in the season with the most notable being Bradley Wiggins' overall victory in the Tour de France. Wiggins (2), Mark Cavendish (3) and Chris Froome also took stage victories in the event, with Froome finishing second to Wiggins in the overall standings.
