Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor was an American professional cyclist. Even by modern cycling standards, Taylor could be considered the greatest American sprinter of all time.
BMX racing is a type of off-road bicycle racing. The format of BMX was derived from motocross racing. BMX bicycle races are sprint races on purpose-built off-road single-lap race tracks. The track usually consists of a starting gate for up to eight racers, a groomed, serpentine, dirt race course made of various jumps and rollers and a finish line. The course is usually about 15 feet (4.6 m) wide and has large banked corners, which are angled inward, that help the riders maintain speed. The sport of BMX racing is facilitated by a number of regional and international sanctioning bodies. They provide rules for sanctioning rules, specify age groups and skill-level classifications, and maintain a points-accumulation system over the racing season. The sport is very family oriented and largely participant-driven, with riders ranging in age from 2 to 70, and over. Professional ranks exist for both men and women, where the age ranges from 17 to over 40 years old.
Thomas Simpson was one of Britain's most successful professional cyclists. He was born in Haswell, County Durham, and later moved to Harworth, Nottinghamshire. Simpson began road cycling as a teenager before taking up track cycling, specialising in pursuit races. He won a bronze medal for track cycling at the 1956 Summer Olympics and a silver at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games.
Cyclo-cross is a form of bicycle racing. Races typically take place in the autumn and winter, and consist of many laps of a short course featuring pavement, wooded trails, grass, steep hills and obstacles requiring the rider to quickly dismount, carry the bike while navigating the obstruction and remount. Races for senior categories are generally between 40 minutes and an hour long, with the distance varying depending on the ground conditions. The sport is strongest in the traditional road cycling countries such as Belgium, France and the Netherlands.
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.
Road bicycle racing is the cycle sport discipline of road cycling, held primarily on paved roads. Road racing is the most popular professional form of bicycle racing, in terms of numbers of competitors, events and spectators. The two most common competition formats are mass start events, where riders start simultaneously and race to a set finish point; and time trials, where individual riders or teams race a course alone against the clock. Stage races or "tours" take multiple days, and consist of several mass-start or time-trial stages ridden consecutively.
Mountain bike racing is the competitive cycle sport discipline of mountain biking held on off-road terrain. The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) recognised the discipline relatively late in 1990, when it sanctioned the world championships in Durango, Colorado. The first UCI Mountain Bike World Cup series took place in 1988. Its nine-race circuit covered two continents—Europe and North America—and was sponsored by Grundig. Cross-country racing was the only World Cup sport at this time. In 1993, a six-event downhill World Cup was introduced. In 1996, cross-country mountain biking events were added to the Olympic Games. In 2006, cross-country mountain biking events became part of the World Deaf Cycling Championships for the first time in San Francisco, USA.
Seamus "Shay" Elliott was an Irish road bicycle racer, Ireland's first major international rider, with a record comparable only to Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche. He was the first Irish person to ride the Tour de France, first to win a stage, and first to wear the yellow jersey, and first English speaker to win stages in all the Grand Tours.
Robert ("Bob") Charles Mionske is a two-time U.S. Olympic racing cyclist and U.S. National Champion (1990). In the 1988 Summer Olympics, held in Seoul, South Korea, he placed fourth in the Individual Road Race. He retired from professional cycling in 1993 and is now an attorney based in Portland, Oregon, with a practice in bicycle law. He wrote Legally Speaking, a national column on bicycle law, between 2002 and 2009, and has also written Bicycling & the Law: Your Rights as a Cyclist, a book on bicycle law published in August 2007. Mionske has written his Legally Speaking column on bicycle law for VeloNews and his Road Rights column on bicycle law for Bicycling Magazine. In February 2015, Mionske returned to writing his Legally Speaking column at VeloNews.
The UCI World Championships are annual competitions promoted by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) to determine world champion cyclists. They are held in several different styles of racing, in a different country each year. Championship winners wear a white jersey with coloured bands around the chest for the following year. The similarity to the colours of a rainbow gives them the colloquial name of "the rainbow jersey." The first three individuals or teams in each championship win gold, silver and bronze medals. Former world champions are allowed to wear a trim to their collar and sleeves in the same pattern as the rainbow jersey.
Robin Morton is an American former cycling team manager and was the first and only female manager in men's professional cycling. She also created the first Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) registered American professional road racing team in 1984. Cycling in Europe is a traditionally male sport and includes rules prohibiting women from the race caravans. At managers' meetings prior to races in Europe, the race organization would vote on whether Morton would be allowed to ride in the team car. Morton was elected to the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame in 2016.
The United States National Professional Road Race Championships began in 1985. They are run by the governing body, USA Cycling. Until 2006 the race was open to all nationalities, the first American to finish being named the winner and given a distinctive jersey. Since the championship in Greenville, South Carolina, in 2006, all riders have had to be American.
The Tour of Somerville is an annual, three-day series of bicycle races held in and around Somerville, New Jersey, during Memorial Day weekend. The featured Memorial Day event, the Kugler-Anderson 50-mile race for professional and elite cyclists is the oldest competitive bicycle race in the country, having first been run in 1940. The event has become known as "The Belmont Stakes of Cycling" and draws international Olympians and top cyclists from around the world. It was known as the predominant cycling race in America from the 1940s through the 1980s.
Arthur Augustus Zimmerman was one of the world's great cycling sprint riders and winner of the first world championship in 1893. His prizes as an amateur were a consideration in the establishment of the International Cycling Association (ICA).
George Lewis Mount is an American Olympic and professional cyclist. Mount was sixth at the 1976 Montreal Olympics road race and later with the 1980 Olympic boycott looming launched a professional career and propelled the US into post-war international cycling.
The Newark velodrome was a wooden bicycle track in the Vailsburg neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, located at the northeast corner of the intersection of South Orange Avenue and Munn Avenue. It opened in 1911 and measured six laps to the mile, or 293 yards per lap. It replaced another 1/6-mile wooden velodrome that was located to the south, in the northwest corner of the current Vailsburg Park. That velodrome opened on May 10, 1908, and replaced a 1/4-mile wooden velodrome that had opened in 1897 on the same site.
Motor-paced racing and motor-paced cycling refer to cycling behind a pacer in a car or more usually on a motorcycle. The cyclist follows as close as they can to benefit from the slipstream of their pacer. The first paced races were behind other cyclists, sometimes as many as five riders on the same tandem. Bordeaux-Paris and record attempts have been ridden behind cars. More usually races or training are behind motorcycles.
Frank Louis Kramer (1880–1958) was an American gold medal cyclist. He won 16 consecutive national championships from 1901 to 1916. He was inducted into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame in 1988.
A fatbike is an off-road bicycle built to accommodate oversized tyres, typically 3.8 in (97 mm) or larger and rims 2.16 in (55 mm) or wider, designed for low ground pressure to allow riding on soft, unstable terrain, such as snow, sand, bogs and mud. Fatbikes are built around frames with wide forks and stays to accommodate the space required to fit these wide rims and tires. The wide tires can be used with inflation pressures as low as 34 kPa; 0.34 bar (5 psi) to allow for a smooth ride over rough obstacles. A rating of 55–69 kPa; 0.55–0.69 bar (8–10 psi) is suitable for most riders. Fatbikes were developed for use in snow or sand, but are capable of traversing diverse terrain types including snow, sand, desert, bogs, mud, pavement, or traditional mountain biking trails.