As a road cycling fan, with a particular focus on the women’s peloton, I was shocked to learn that women’s cycling has not long been part of the Olympic Games. So I thought I’d share some of the rather disappointing history, as well as shamelessly plug the Aussie women riding in Paris 2024.
In fact, women’s road cycling didn’t feature at the Olympic Games until 1984 in Los Angeles. But men’s road cycling was there from the very first modern Olympics in 1896! Albeit the men’s race was then excluded for 40 years, returning in 1936 in Berlin.
And since that time, Australian women have won the race twice – Kathy Watt in 1992 at Barcelona and Sara Carrigan in 2004 at Athens. And guess how many times an Aussie man has won the men’s road race – that’s right – zero.
The individual time trial for women first joined the Games in 1996 in Atlanta and we won our first Gold in that event last week when the fabulous Grace Brown won gold. The men’s time trial was first featured in 1912 at the Stockholm Games. Strangely it disappeared from the program in 1936 and didn’t feature again until 1996 in Atlanta. Like the road race, it’s never been won by an Australian rider either.
Track cycling has had a love/hate relationship…
