This is a list of films about bicycles and cycling, featuring notable films where bicycles and cycling play a central role in the development of the plot.
Title | Year | Genre | Type | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
6 Day Bike Rider | 1934 | Comedy | Velodrome | To impress a girl, a clumsy bumpkin (Joe E. Brown) enters a marathon indoor race. |
Bicycle Thieves | 1948 | Drama | Bicycle theft | A father and son search Rome for a stolen bicycle |
Cape to Cape | 2021 | Documentary | A documentary about the fastest unsupported continental bicycle crossing. | |
Crossing America | 2024 | Documentary | A documentary about the Jonas Deichmann's duathlon across USA. | |
Cinq Tulipe Rouges (Five Red Tulips) | 1949 | Murder mystery | Tour De France | During the Tour de France, five champions, all wearing the yellow jersey, are assassinated. Each time, the murderer leaves a red tulip close to the victim as a signature. (French, no subtitles) |
Skid Kids | 1953 | Drama | Cycle speedway | A Children's Film Foundation film. 'Swanky' and his chums take on bike thieves. |
Onna Keirin-ō | 1956 | Keirin | ||
Vive le Tour | 1962 | Short | Tour De France | |
For A Yellow Jersey | 1965 | Short | ||
A Sunday in Hell | 1977 | Documentary | Road racing | Chronicles the 1976 Paris–Roubaix race. |
Breaking Away | 1979 | Comedy-drama | Road racing and Little 500 | Four Bloomington, Indiana friends team up in Little 500 race. Golden Globe winner and five Oscar nominations. |
BMX Bandits | 1983 | Adventure | BMX racing | Australian children's film, featuring Nicole Kidman. |
American Flyers | 1985 | Drama | Road racing | Kevin Costner as a world-class long-distance racer. |
Pee-wee's Big Adventure | 1985 | Comedy | Bicycle Theft | Paul Reubens as a man-child on a quest to find his stolen customized bicycle. |
Rad | 1986 | BMX racing | A boy risks college future to enter Helltrack race. | |
Quicksilver | 1986 | Kevin Bacon as a paperboy and becomes a bicycle messenger | ||
The Cyclist | 1987 | Drama | Iranian film. | |
Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar | 1992 | Drama | Indian movie about sporting rivalry between three schools. | |
Il grande Fausto | 1995 | Road racing | ||
The Unknown Cyclist | 1998 | |||
2 Seconds | 1998 | |||
Downhill racing | Laurie takes a job as a bike courier in Montreal after being fired from her previous job as a professional downhill racer. | |||
El Amateur | 1999 | Road racing | Argentina film. | |
Road to Paris | 2001 | Documentary | Road racing | A look at the training and success of Lance Armstrong. |
Cyclomania | 2001 | Road racing | Finland film. | |
Le Vélo de Ghislain Lambert | 2001 | Comedy | Road racing | The story of Lambert, a modest Belgian bike racer in the '70s. |
Nasu: Summer in Andalusia | 2003 | Anime | Road racing | Japan film. |
Triplets of Belleville | 2003 | Animated | A grandmother seeks a kidnapped Tour de France cyclist. | |
Cycling Chronicles; LandScape The Boy Saw | 2004 | |||
Hell on Wheels | 2005 | Documentary | Road Racing | Germany film about 2003 Tour de France. |
Overcoming | 2005 | Documentary | Road racing | |
The Flying Scotsman | 2006 | Drama | Track Cycling | Based on life and career of Scottish amateur cyclist Graeme Obree. |
Island Etude | 2006 | Drama | Taiwan film. | |
Klunkerz: A Film About Mountain Bikes | 2006 | |||
Clorophilla | 2006 | Freeride | Italy film. | |
The Cycling Genius Is Coming | 2008 | |||
Bicycle Dreams | 2009 | Documentary | Road racing | A look at 3,000-mile Race Across America. |
The Birth of Big Air | 2010 | Documentary | BMX | Made for TV as part of ESPN's 30 for 30 series. Chronicles the life and career of Mat Hoffman. |
Ride the Divide | 2010 | Documentary | Endurance racing | Race along the Great Divide from Banff, Canada, to the U.S.-Mexico border. |
The Last Kilometer | 2012 | Documentary | Road racing | A portrait of road cycling. With Ignazio & Francesco Moser, Davide Rebellin, Gianni Mura, Didi Senft. |
Premium Rush | 2012 | Action Film | Messenger biking | Follows a bicycle messenger chased around New York City by a corrupt police officer who wants an envelope the messenger has. |
Pantani: The Accidental Death of a Cyclist | 2013 | Documentary | Road racing | [1] |
The Armstrong Lie | 2013 | Documentary | Road racing | A portrait of Lance Armstrong as he trains for his eighth Tour de France victory and the events leading to his downfall. |
La grande boucle | 2013 | Comedy | Road racing | A French amateur cyclist decides to take part in the Tour de France. |
Bicycle | 2014 | Documentary | History | The rise and fall of the bicycle and bicycle culture in Great Britain from its origins to modern day. |
Slaying the Badger | 2014 | Documentary | Road racing | Made for TV as a part of ESPN's 30 for 30 series. Examines rivalry between Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault ("The Badger") as teammates during 1986 Tour de France. |
Yowamushi Pedal Re:RIDE | 2014 | Animated | Road racing | |
To the Fore | 2015 | Drama | Road racing | Hong Kong-Chinese film. |
Yowamushi Pedal Re: ROAD | 2015 | Animated | Road racing | |
Yowamushi Pedal: The Movie | 2015 | Animated | Road racing | |
The Program | 2015 | Drama | Road racing | An adaptation of David Walsh's book Seven Deadly Sins depicting his battle to expose Lance Armstrong. |
Le Ride | 2016 | Documentary | Road racing | A look back at the 1928 Tour de France, and particularly the four-member Australasian team that rode in it, interspersed with a modern-day attempt by the film's director Phil Keoghan and a riding partner to retrace the 1928 route, holding to the original race schedule and riding on 1928-vintage racing bikes. |
Blood Road | 2017 | Documentary | Mountain biking | Covers the 2015 ride of mountain bike endurance champion Rebecca Rusch to visit the site where her father died when his plane was shot down during the Vietnam War—a 1,200-mile journey along the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. |
Tour de Pharmacy | 2017 | Comedy | Road racing | HBO mockumentary short film starring Andy Samberg, about a 1980s Tour de France competition beset by doping and bad behavior. |
Time Trial | 2017 | Documentary | Road cycling | British documentary film about the final season of David Millar's professional cycling career. |
Icarus | 2017 | Documentary | Road Racing | Brian Fogel, a competitive amateur bicyclist and documentary filmmaker, attempts to make a film about the prevalence of performance-enhancing drug abuse in bicycle racing, a project that connects him with the head of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory just as the scandal around Russian doping at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games begins to unfold. |
The Ride | 2018 | Drama | BMX | Based on a book with the same title, the inspiring true story of extreme sports legend John Buultjens, The Ride follows John McCord, an athletically gifted youth who triumphs over a troubled upbringing. Starring Ludacris. |
The Climb | 2019 | Comedy | Road cycling | |
LANCE | 2020 | Documentary | Road racing | Made for TV as a part of ESPN's 30 for 30 series. Two-part examination of the life, career, and controversies of Lance Armstrong. |
The Racer | 2020 | Sports film | Road racing | At the start of what will probably be his last Tour de France, Dom is unceremoniously expelled from the team he dedicated his whole life to. As he prepares to return home, a massive doping scandal knocks another teammate out of the Tour and Dom has to get back in the saddle. |
The Limit is Just Me | 2022 | Documentary | Endurance | The film follows adventurer and multiple world record holder Jonas Deichmann as he completes the longest triathlon of all time. |
Tour de France: Unchained | 2022 | Documentary | Tour de France | Behind-the-scenes Netflix documentary following some of the sport’s leading teams. [2] |
The Last Rider | 2022 | Documentary | Road racing | Documentary about the career of Greg Lemond, and the 1989 Tour de France |
Kurangu Pedal | 2022 | Drama - Tamil | Love of cycling | A heartfelt drama that explores a child's quest to learn cycling against the backdrop of a father's unfamiliarity with it, highlighting a generation's emotional bond with bicycles and evoking nostalgia through the innocence and camaraderie of childhood. |
Hard Miles | 2023 | Drama | Touring | A beleaguered coach named Greg rallies a group of disgruntled teenage inmates of a correctional facility for a transformative 1,000-mile (1,600 km) bicycle ride from Denver to the Grand Canyon, where they must battle obstacles and each other. |
Cycling, also known as bicycling or biking, is the activity of riding a bicycle or other type of cycle. It encompasses the use of human-powered vehicles such as balance bikes, unicycles, tricycles, and quadricycles. Cycling is practised around the world for purposes including transport, recreation, exercise, and competitive sport.
BMX, an abbreviation for bicycle motocross or bike motocross, is a cycle sport performed on BMX bikes, either in competitive BMX racing or freestyle BMX, or else in general street or off-road recreation.
A moped is a type of small motorcycle, generally having a less stringent licensing requirement than full motorcycles or automobiles. Historically, the term exclusively meant a similar vehicle with both bicycle pedals and a motorcycle engine. Mopeds typically travel only slightly faster than bicycles on public roads.
Gary Christopher Fisher is considered one of the inventors of the modern mountain bike.
Road cycling is the most widespread form of cycling in which cyclists ride on paved roadways. It includes recreational, racing, commuting, and utility cycling. As users of the road, road cyclists are generally expected to obey the same laws as motorists, however there are certain exceptions. While there are many types of bicycles that are used on the roads such as BMX, recumbents, racing, touring and utility bicycles, dedicated road bicycles have specific characteristics that make them ideal for the sport. Road bicycles generally have thinner tires, lighter frames with no suspension, and a set of drop handle bars to allow riders to get in a more aerodynamic position while cycling at higher speeds. On a flat road, an intermediate cyclist can average about 18 to 20 mph, while a professional rider can average up to 25 mph (40 km/h). At higher speeds, wind resistance becomes an important factor; aerodynamic road bikes have been developed over the years to ensure that as much as possible of the rider's energy is spent propelling the bike forward.
Cycle sport is competitive physical activity using bicycles. There are several categories of bicycle racing including road bicycle racing, cyclo-cross, mountain bike racing, track cycling, BMX, and cycle speedway. Non-racing cycling sports include artistic cycling, cycle polo, freestyle BMX, mountain bike trials, hardcourt bike polo and cycleball. The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) is the world governing body for cycling and international competitive cycling events. The International Human Powered Vehicle Association is the governing body for human-powered vehicles that imposes far fewer restrictions on their design than does the UCI. The UltraMarathon Cycling Association is the governing body for many ultra-distance cycling races.
A cycling club or cycling organisation is a society for cyclists. Clubs tend to be mostly local, and can be general or specialised. They can focus on cycle racing and/or cycling as a means of transport. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Cyclists' Touring Club, (CTC) is a national cycling association; the Tricycle Association, Tandem Club and the Veterans Time Trial Association, for those over 40, are specialist clubs. Members of specialist or national groups often also belong to local clubs.
Tom Ritchey is an American bicycle frame builder, Category 1 racer, fabricator, designer, and founder of Ritchey Design. Ritchey is a US pioneer in modern frame building and the first production mountain bike builder/manufacturer in the history of the sport. He is an innovator of bicycle components that have been used in winning some of the biggest cycling competitions in the world including the UCI World Championships, the Tour de France and the Olympics. In 1988, Ritchey was inducted into the inaugural Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in Crested Butte, Colorado : and 2012, inducted to the United States Bicycle Hall of Fame in Davis, California.
A motorized bicycle is a bicycle with an attached motor or engine and transmission used either to power the vehicle unassisted, or to assist with pedalling. Since it sometimes retains both pedals and a discrete connected drive for rider-powered propulsion, the motorized bicycle is in technical terms a true bicycle, albeit a power-assisted one. Typically they are incapable of speeds above 52 km/h (32 mph); however, in recent years larger motors have been built, allowing bikes to reach speeds of upwards of 113 km/h.
Norman Cycles was a British bicycle, autocycle, moped, and motorcycle manufacturer in Ashford, Kent, England.
Rudge Whitworth Cycles was a British bicycle, bicycle saddle, motorcycle and sports car wheel manufacturer that resulted from the merger of two bicycle manufacturers in 1894, Whitworth Cycle Co. of Birmingham, founded by Charles Henry Pugh and his two sons Charles Vernon and John, and Rudge Cycle Co. of Coventry.
Rex, Rex Motorcycles, Rex-Acme, was a car and motorcycle company which began in Birmingham, England in 1900. Rex soon merged with a Coventry maker of bicycles and cars named Allard and then later in 1922 the company merged with Coventry's 'Acme' motorcycle company forming 'Rex Acme'. The company existed until 1933, and, in its heyday, was considered one of the greatest names in the British motorcycle industry.
Scott Sports SA is a producer of bicycles, winter equipment, motorsports gear and sportswear. The company's main office is in Givisiez, Switzerland, with branches in Europe, the United States, South Africa and India.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to cycling:
The Tour Divide is an annual mountain biking ride traversing the length of the Rocky Mountains, from Canada to the Mexican border. Following the 2,745-mile (4,418 km) Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, it is an ultra-distance cycling ride that is an extreme test of endurance, self-reliance and mental toughness. The ride format is strictly self-supported, and it is not a stage race - the clock runs continuously from the start until riders cross the finish line, usually more than two weeks later.
Mamil is an acronym and a pejorative term for a "middle-aged man in Lycra" – that is, men who ride an expensive racing bicycle for leisure, while wearing body-hugging jerseys and bicycle shorts.
Michael Richard Hall was a British cyclist and race organiser who specialised in self-supported ultra-distance cycling races. In 2012, he won the inaugural World Cycle Race. In 2013 and 2016, he won the Tour Divide ultra-endurance mountain bike race across the Rocky Mountains in Canada and the United States. In 2014, he won the inaugural Trans Am Bike Race, a road-based event from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast in the United States. From 2013, he was the principal organiser of the Transcontinental Race, an event similar to the TransAm Bicycle Race, but that traverses Europe. Michael Hall was also featured in the cycling film Inspired to Ride a film directed by Mike Dion.
Bicycle is a 2014 documentary film that was written and directed by Michael B. Clifford. In the documentary Clifford traces the rise and fall of the bicycle and bicycle culture in Great Britain from its origins to modern day.
Blood Road is a 2017 documentary film directed by Nicholas Schrunk and produced by Red Bull. It stars endurance mountain biker Rebecca Rusch, Vietnamese cyclist Huyen Nguyen and cartographer Don Duvall. The film chronicles the journey of Rusch traversing over 1,200 miles (1,900 km) on bicycle along the Ho Chi Minh trail to the site where her father, a US Air Force F-4 fighter pilot, was shot down in Laos 40 years earlier. It won numerous best of festival awards and a News & Documentary Emmy Award in 2018.
A cycling jersey is a specialised jersey for cycling.