British Cycling – British Cycling is Stronger than Ever

Over the last few years British cycling has seen a resurgence as more of the younger generations are rediscovering the joys of riding a bicycle.

Not only are they finding that it can be a lot of fun riding a bike out on the trails, but many of them are now finding with the high cost of petrol and the restrictions being placed on cars in cities like London that it can be far cheaper to ride a bike than drive a car. Add to this the fact that it is far healthier to pedal a bike than steer a car and bike sales in Britain are increasing exponentially. The number of people who go cycling weekly has been increasing rapidly, some for fun and some out of necessity.

With this increase in cycling has come a keen new interest in competition, you cannot put a group of men together in a sport without competition becoming an issue.

British cycling now features hundreds of races every weekend when the weather is good , in fact even when the weather is not so good you will still find hundreds of men off all ages lining up for a good race.

British interest has become very keen and in the last Olympic Games in Beijing the British team took home a record number of medals and this year in the ultimate race, the Tour de France, Mark Cavendish won 6 stages and came is second in the overall points standing.

Bradley Wiggins of team Garmin-Slipstream came in 4th place overall. It is successes like this that serve to keep the younger crowds interested in racing and pushing themselves to succeed.

Throughout the UK you will now find hundreds of event and races designed to foster an interest in cycling and racing for fun and prizes, some of them are aimed towards finding qualifiers for professional events and the Olympic Games. Welsh Cycling is the main organization in Wales that is internationally recognized as the administrator of all six types of cycle racing including developing grass root and Commonwealth Games teams.

Welsh cycling has an organization of over 70 clubs throughout the country that all work towards promoting events, rides, competitions and social events. The organization is responsible for road racing, track, mountain bike, cyclo-cross, cycle speedway and BMX events at all levels of competition. Their main goal is to promote a fun and safe atmosphere of friendly competition and to get more people involved in the sport.

Further up north you will find Scottish Cycling which is very similar to the Welsh organization in that its main goal is to promote the sport of cycling throughout Scotland. Over the course of a year Scottish Cycling organizes dozens of different weekly cycling events is rapidly growing in popularity with Glasgow participating in the annual Skyride this year.

Not only are there fun amateur events going on in Scottish cycling, but this year the Scottish stage of the Tour of Britain is over 150 km. This is Britain's premier professional cycling race and will feature 96 riders and 16 teams from around the world all vying for the championship.

World Cyclist from Scotland

Scotland takes great pride in having produced many world class cyclists over the years, but wants people to realize that cycling weekly for fun or for competition is good for your overall health and it gets you out and about with likeminded riders. This creates friendships that will last a lifetime and gives everyone a chance to make new friends wherever you go, while getting you out in the fresh air.

The British Cycling organization was first founded in 1959 as the British Cycling Federation to help settle an ongoing dispute over the legality of road racing. Today the organization is in charge of overseeing most of the cycle racing in the UK with the exception of road time trials in England which are run by Cycling Time Trials.

In the last few years British cycling has dominated the track cycling world and in the last five years has been at the top of the medals charts in three out of the six UCI Track Cycling World Championships. They have worked with both NASA and the McLaren Group along with others to make major improvements in their performance and are expected to continue their climb to dominance in the future.