As of today, Glasgow, Scotland, hosts the World Cycling Championships, which bring together the best exponents in the world in 13 disciplines, in an event organized by the International Cycling Union and in which the Colombian Cycling Teams will be competing in nine of the 13 disciplines summoned for the UCI Grand World Championship.
The national representative is made up of 63 athletes, who will seek gold medals on the road, track, BMX Racing, BMX Freestyle, Mountain Bike in the modalities of Cross Country, Marathon and Downhill, and Paracycling on track and road .
On the route there will be 21 athletes who will take part in the competitions that will take place on August 5 and 6, in the case of time trials, and from 8 to 13 in long-distance events, with names such as those of Rigoberto Urán and Harold Tejada, who arrive after competing in the Tour de France; Santiago Buitrago, who has just won a stage in the Giro d’Italia; Paula Patiño, who will compete in the Women’s Tour de France before joining the group in Glasgow, and Diana Carolina Peñuela, who will seek her second Women’s Tour of Colombia title this week.
In track cycling, which will be the first discipline to see action in the World Cup and which will take place at the Sir Chris Hoy velodrome between today and August 9, Six athletes will be representing Colombia: Kevin Santiago Quintero, world bronze medalist at the Saint-Quentin En Yvelines event in 2022; Martha Bayonnenational speed figure in the UCI Nations Cup season, as well as Santiago Ramírez, Cristian Ortega and Carlos Daniel Echeverry.
For its part, in the BMX Racing that will take place on August 12 and 13, 12 athletes were summoned in the Championship category, in elite, Sub-23 and junior, on a payroll headed by the Olympic medalists Mariana Pajón and Carlos Ramírez; who will be accompanied by Diego Alejandro Arboleda, Mateo Carmona, Juan Camilo Ramírez and Gabriela Bolle in elite.
More than 8,000 athletes will be competing in the event: for the first time in history, thirteen cycling disciplines compete for their World Championships in the same place and date.
Normally, each discipline held its World Cups on its own and scattered throughout the world. In 2022, the Road World Championships will take place in Australia, the Track World Championships near Paris, the MTB Championships in the French Alps and the BMX Freestyle Championships in Abu Dhabi.
The Olympic disciplines (track, route, BTT and BMX) will be especially scrutinized, one year after the Olympic Games in Paris. But there will also be less followed modalities, such as indoor cycling, trial, Gran Fondo and para-cycling.
“In terms of exposure, it’s a bit like the Olympic Games of cycling. Less mediatic disciplines are going to benefit and be exposed to the light”, values Florian Rousseau, director of the Olympic program of the French Federation (FFC).
In 2027, during the next “Super World Championships”, organized in Haute-Savoie, France, the number of disciplines will increase to 19.
The organization of the Glasgow World Cups, which expect more than a million spectators, the challenge is “both exciting and terrifying.” Because, according to Paul Bush, president of the 2023 World Cup, who was already in charge of the Commonwealth Games in 2014, also in Glasgow, “it is the biggest sporting event in the history of Scotland, bigger than a rugby World Cup” .
In the sporting aspect, this appointment is a crucial stage towards the Olympic Games in Paris-2024.
Especially for track cyclists, who open the race on Thursday until August 9 at the Sir Chris Hoy velodrome, where the different nations will want to validate their Olympic qualification quotas.
Great powers such as Great Britain, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and France will want to leave their mark ahead of the imminent Olympic event.