Cyclists compete in individual pursuit and time trial, over distances ranging from 500 m to 1 km.
Sport classes in Para track cycling are named with a letter and a number. In the case of the track competition, the letter C indicates that it is for conventional bicycles with adaptation and the number shows the degree of impairment of the cyclists.
In this way, we can find sports classifications between C1 and C5, which imply deficiencies in the lower extremities. In track cycling, we also find tandem competitions for people with visual impairment (B1 and B2).
Para cycling was first developed by visually impaired cyclists who competed in tandem. Since then, the sport has continued to grow and was first introduced at the 1984 New York Paralympic Games, with the inclusion of road races for athletes with cerebral palsy for the first time.
Over the next four Paralympic Games more events were added, with track Para cycling making its debut at Atlanta 1996.
The discipline made its Parapan American debut at the Guadalajara 2011 Games. In the last edition of Lima 2019, the United States won a total of eight medals, four of which were gold.
In the track Para cycling we can find the following modalities:
Time trial: cyclists start from the same point and compete against time to fulfill the corresponding distance. The competition takes place over 1 km (four laps) for men and 500 m (two laps) for women.
Individual Pursuit: Riders (either solo or in tandem) start on opposite sides of the track trying to catch up with their opponent in three km (12 laps) or four km (16 laps). The top four times in qualifying advance to the medal race, with the two fastest qualifiers competing for gold and silver and the third-place finisher competing against the fourth-place finisher for the bronze medal.
