The Olympic road race peloton will be small - but that's a good thing

Adam Becket

News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com - should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.

Seasoned cycling viewers tuning into the Olympic road races this weekend may be in for a bit of a shock. Rather than the 170-plus peloton we’re used to, around 90 riders will line up in the men’s and women’s events in Paris. To be specific, the provisional start lists show 88 riders for the men’s race, and 95 for the women's. 

This is not part of a plan to make road racing more exciting, just down to strict restrictions on the number of athletes allowed at the Olympics. The IOC caps the overall number allowed, and sports like cycling have been impacted. However, it might just be the perfect way of making the road races exhilarating.

The size of the peloton has been reduced from 2021, when there were almost 130 riders lined up in Tokyo, and this could have a massive impact on the races. Think less control, more chaos. To compare the Olympics to the World Championships, there will be about 100 fewer  riders in the Paris pelotons vs those on the start line in Zurich, racing for rainbow bands in a couple of months.

It’s almost a different sport, with less strength in numbers and more individual riders trying individual things. Why not attack from there, if there is no-one to pull you back; it is all down to the skill of the rider themselves. The Olympic course looks a bit like the Tour of Flanders in terms of its profile and its length, but it won’t be raced like the Ronde, it can’t be. 

I’m all for it. With team tactics almost thrown out the window there can be no repeat of 2012, a race with 144 starters, in which GB tried to set the race up for Mark Cavendish. It will be the strongest rider on the day who wins, and there’s very little that a team can do about it.

With the biggest squads just four riders, it means that nations have the opportunity to send their best options, rather than thinking about the best mix. For example, Belgium are able to send Wout van Aert and Remco Evenepoel in the same squad of four in the men’s race, and the Netherlands have picked all three of Demi Vollering, Lorena Wiebes and Marianne Vos in the women’s equivalent, three of the best riders in the world.

You can foresee a situation where Evenepoel or Vollering attack from afar, which could work. And, if this doesn’t work, then the race tilts in favour of Van Aert or Wiebes. It is almost impossible to predict, and this makes it all the better, in my opinion. 

Fewer riders does mean that many are forced to miss out, obviously, but there is only one gold on offer anyway. Places are allocated based on rankings in 2022-23, hence why GB gets the maximum riders in both the men’s and women’s events. Smaller nations are only able to send one rider, which you could see as a bad thing, but equally, the race is so small that someone like Biniam Girmay of Eritrea or Jhonatan Narváez of Ecuador have real chances of impacting events. They will not be crowded out. Still, it’s a shame that defending champion Richard Carapaz won’t be there.

A peloton of 90 will mean a thrilling, quite different race, especially without race radios, a quirk of the Olympic event. It will feel quite alien to a traditional cycling fan, but I think it will be all the more exciting. Perhaps this year’s Olympic road race could serve as inspiration to other events, , maybe more races should have smaller fields; although it is hard to foresee teams themselves going for this. As a special event, though, it is a real treat.

This piece is part of The Leadout, the offering of newsletters from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.

If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.