Cycling: a global sport?

Cycling: a global sport?

Cycling used  to be a sport mainly dominated by Frenchmen, Belgians and Italians. They divided the big races among themselves for many decades, but is this still true today? Let's have a look on how global cycling became today.

A look on the rankings

115 countries managed to gain points on the UCI World Ranking. Belgium finished on top while Macau finished as last country on the list. Other traditional cycling countries as Italy and France still finished second and fourth with Holland finishing in between them. In the top 10 do we find some other usual suspects such as Spain or Germany but also some suprises such as Slovenia and Denmark.

 

A matter of time

If we look at the the winners of Tour de France, the biggest race in cycling we notice that it would take till the 1950ies to have a winner that doesn't come from France, Italy or the Benelux. The Spaniard Frederico Bahamontes is the first who can break the dominance of the traditional nations. He would stay an exception together with his compatriot Luis Ocana. 

But in the 1980ies cycling becomes much bigger overseas when we see that the American Greg Lemond is the first winner from outside that Europe that can win in France. In this decade we also see Australians and Colombians competing for stage wins, but it would take till the 2010ies to see the first ever winner of Tour de France from these nations. 

We see similar trends on the worldchampionship where titles are often divided among the 'Big 3' with a few exceptions now and then. But we can see a big trend change in the period 2009-2019 when only one Belgian could win the world title and we see the first Australian, Norwegian, Slovak, Portugese, Polish and Danish worldchampion.

Conclusion

Cycling is stil dominated by Belgium, France and Italy in amount of riders, by world rankings and by victories in big races but we saw a big decrease of their dominance of these nations especially this decade. The grand tours & classics were divided among riders from Europe, the Americas and Oceania. Maybe we can see the first Africans and Asians competing for the podium spots of the grand tours in the 2020ies?