The history of cycling.

This section is a history of the bicycle and of racing on it: how the machine was invented and reinvented, how the first races and the first governing body came about, how the great stage races and records began, and how mountain biking, BMX and the e-bike joined the story. It is history only. Nothing in it teaches riding or bike maintenance, and the deaths in racing it mentions are told briefly, as published history. For how the sport is organised today, start with Learn.

How these pages are written

• Every date has a source. Each fact is given with the museum, governing body, encyclopedia, historian or publication it comes from.
• Disputed questions get every version. The length of Drais's first ride, the Macmillan claim, who put pedals on the front wheel, Thomson against Dunlop, the first race of 1868, the distance of Paris-Rouen, the date of the recumbent ruling, the 1904 disqualifications, the 1937 derailleur and when BMX joined the UCI are all given with who says what.
• The source is named where it matters. The Tour organiser's websites could not be read for our research, so Tour history rests on the encyclopedias Universalis and EBSCO. Hour record lists before 2014 come from Bikeraceinfo, a results website, not from the UCI.
• Doping only as official decisions record it. The doping page gives the body, the date, the sanction and the results as the body now lists them, and nothing else.
• Wikipedia is named when it stands alone, and anything we saw only in a search summary, or that rests on one source we could not check, is marked unconfirmed or left out.
• No money. These pages give no prices, prize money, salaries or other money figures.

What is in this section

Inventing the bicycle

The draisine and the velocipede starts with Karl Drais's running machine of 1817, then sets out the contested Scottish claim for Kirkpatrick Macmillan and the long argument over whether the Michaux family or Pierre Lallement first put pedals on a bicycle. The safety bicycle and the pneumatic tyre covers the high wheeler, John Kemp Starley's Rover of 1885 and the dispute between Robert William Thomson and John Boyd Dunlop.

Racing and its rulers

The first races runs from Saint-Cloud in 1868 and Paris-Rouen in 1869 to Paris-Brest-Paris and the first Paris-Roubaix. The UCI and the governing bodies tells how continental federations walked out of the International Cycling Association in Paris in April 1900, and follows the UCI through its first championships, the recumbent ruling, the amateur split of 1965 and the disciplines it has added since. How the Grand Tours began covers the newspapers behind the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a Espana, and the 1904 disqualifications. The derailleur covers the 1937 Tour, the first to permit derailleurs, and the Hour record gives every era of the record and the rule changes of 2000 and 2014.

Wider history

Women's racing history runs from the Bordeaux race of 1868 to the Tour de France Femmes and the first Paris-Roubaix Femmes. Cycling at the Olympics through history follows the programme from Athens in 1896, and doping and official decisions records the laws, the bodies and the rulings that changed Grand Tour results.

New disciplines

Mountain biking origins covers the clunkers and Repack races of Marin County and the first purpose-built frames, BMX origins the dirt tracks of 1960s California and the road to the Olympics, and the e-bike the reported 1890s patents, Yamaha's Power Assist System of 1993 and the US and EU laws that defined the product. The timeline puts the main dated events in one table.

Related reading

The UCI as it is today is described on the UCI, and each kind of racing in the Learn section. Recent results are in Events, equipment rules and standards in Equipment, and terms used across the site in the glossary.