Peter Maniaty
This year is a two-wheeled anomaly. For unlike almost every year since 1903, it can be reasonably argued the most important cycling event on French shores is not the Tour de France.
Indeed, such is the significance of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, the all-powerful ASO long ago acquiesced to transfer the final stage of le Grand Boucle to Nice – 940km south of the Champs-Élysées – for logistical and security reasons. This means 2024 is the first time in the Tour’s illustrious 121-year history that it will not conclude somewhere within the arrondissements of Paris.
The Olympic cycling program begins the day after the Opening Ceremony, with both the Men’s and Women’s individual time trials taking place on Saturday 27 July, just six days after the Tour de France. By the time the Closing Ceremony rolls around on 11 August, 514 of the world’s finest cyclists will have competed in and around the French capital, fighting for 66 medals across 22 events and five disciplines.
2024 also sees equal representation of men and women in cycling events for the first time at an Olympics; a change perhaps most noticeable in the road races where Paris will have a significantly smaller men’s peloton (90 riders, down from 130 in Tokyo) balanced by a significantly larger women’s peloton (90 riders, up from 67 riders in Tokyo).
As always, the competition across all events will be fierce. After several lean Olympiads that have yielded just one gold medal for Australia since 2008 – somewhat poetically won by Anna Meares, now Chef de Mission of the Australian Olympic Team.
“I have had the honour of receiving four Australian Olympic team ceremony uniforms and I treasure each one, Meares said when the Aussie uniform was announced. “For Olympians it brings us together, from different sports, backgrounds and experiences, proudly uniting us through that team uniform.
“It creates a connection and sense of belonging to the Australian Olympic team’s proud history. It begins our Olympic experience and post-Games continues to be worn by Olympians proudly to events, long past our days as elite athletes.”
Confident … But Cautious
Our cyclists will arrive in Paris confident, but also rightly cautious. Olympic gold is the scarcest of metals. Here are some of the key events and riders to watch…
Track
Medal Events: 12
Venue: Vélodrome deSaint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
Dates: Monday 5 August–Sunday 11 August
Australians to watch: Matthew Richardson, Georgia Baker, Sam Welsford, Men’s Team Pursuit.
Key story: Can anyone challenge the dominance of Great Britain who have seized a staggering 28 gold medals on the Olympic boards since Beijing in 2008?
Road
Medal Events: 4
Dates: Saturday 27 July –Men’s & Women’s Time Trials
Course: 32.4km, starts at Esplanade des Invalides, finishes on Pont Alexandre III.
Saturday 3 August – Men’s Road Race
Course: 273km, 2,800m ascent, starts and finishes at Pont d’Iéna, near the Trocadéro.
Sunday 4 August – Women’s Road Race
Course: 158km, 1,700m ascent, starts and finishes at Pont d’Iéna, near the Trocadéro.
Australians to watch: Grace Brown, Luke Plapp, Michael Matthews.
Key story: What impact will the significantly smaller (Men’s race) and larger (Women’s race) pelotons have in the road races?
MTB
Medal Events: 2
Venue: Élancourt Hill
Dates: Sunday 28 July – Women’s Cross Country, Monday 29 July – Men’s Cross Country
Australian to watch: Rebecca Henderson.
Key story: A smattering of roadies usually put their hand up for the men’s Olympic MTB events. In Paris the most serious challenger is again likely to be Great Britain’s Tom Pidcock, the reigning champion from Tokyo. Meanwhile in the women’s race, Puck Pieterse from the Netherlands will face a stern test from two highly motivated locals, Loana Lecomte and five-time World Champion Pauline Ferrand Prevot.
BMX freestyle
Medal Events: 2
Venue: Place de la Concorde
Dates: Tuesday 30 July (Qualifying), Wednesday 31 July (Finals)
Australians to watch: Logan Martin, Natalya Diehm.
Key story: Place de la Concorde hosted many public executions during the French Revolution, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Can the Gold Coast’s Logan Martin execute his own revolutions to secure an Olympic double?
BMX racing
Medal Events: 2
Venue: Vélodrome deSaint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
Dates: Thursday 1 August,Friday 2 August (Finals)
Australians to watch: Saya Sakakibara, Izaac Kennedy.
Key story: French riders dominate the men’s rankings. Saya Sakakibara and Great Britain’s Bethany Shriever are standouts in the women’s. But in the helter skelter world of BMX Racing, luck is often just as important as form. You can’t win if you don’t finish. 
Flashback : Paris 1924
2024 is the third time Paris has hosted a summer Olympics. The most recent was a century ago, and it’s safe to say the cycling program was rather different back then.
The 1924 Games saw 139 riders descend upon Paris for just six cycling events, two road and four track. All the combatants were male and strictly amateur. There was no road race per se, just a brace of individual and team time trials, held concurrently over an extraordinarily long distance by today’s standards. France’s Armand Blanchonnet won the individual gold medal, finishing the epic 188km course in six hours, 20 minutes, 28 seconds at an average speed of a touch under 30km/h.
Australia’s lone representative, 23-year-old Melbournian Sidney Ramsden, was almost an hour slower than Blanchonnet in 36th place. France also claimed gold in the team time trial, where the times of the three fastest finishers from each nation were simply combined.
The 1924 track events were held on the 500-metre outdoor Vélodrome de Vincennes which was also used for cycling at the 1900 Paris Olympic Games. (The velodrome still stands today and actually hosted the finish of the Tour de France between 1968 and 1974.) Track events in 1924 included a 50km Scratch Race won by Ko Willems from the Netherlands, Sprint won by France’s Lucien Michard, Tandem won by France’s Lucien Choury and Jean Cugnot, and Team Pursuit taken out by Italy.
Australia was represented in two events on the track by a 19-year-old from Cootamundra, George Dempsey, who went on to forge a successful Six-Day career. Dempsey’s best result came in the Sprint where he was knocked out in the Semi-Finals.
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