{"id":342992,"date":"2025-12-12T11:09:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T11:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/342992\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T11:09:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T11:09:16","slug":"uci-confirms-equal-number-of-womens-and-mens-starts-in-cycling-at-the-2028-los-angeles-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/342992\/","title":{"rendered":"UCI confirms equal number of women’s and men’s starts in cycling at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UCI has announced that an equal number of qualification places will be available for men and women at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, 257 for each across all cycling disciplines.<\/p>\n

Athletes will be competing for 22 gold medals across road, track, MTB, BMX racing and BMX freestyle disciplines, making cycling the third largest sport at the Olympics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The UCI introduced gender parity for the 2024 Paris Olympics<\/a>, with the same total number of places and medals continuing for the 2028 Games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Going back to the previous 2020 Tokyo Olympics<\/a>, although MTB and BMX events were open to equal numbers of male and female participants, road events had offered more men\u2019s than women\u2019s starts: 67 for women and 130 for men.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Track cycling<\/a> parity was also achieved for the first time at the Paris Olympics, by adding another seven women\u2019s places.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s cycling\u2019s profile increases
\n\"Tour120m people worldwide are said to have watched the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. Leon van Bon \/ Zwift<\/p>\n

The announcement of gender parity at the LA Olympics reinforces the increasing profile of women\u2019s cycling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Zwift released a report on the state of women\u2019s cycling ahead of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, which highlighted the progress made since the event\u2019s first staging in 2022, declaring “a golden era for women’s cycling<\/a>“.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 2025 race was broadcast in 190 countries and is reported to have attracted a worldwide audience of 120 million, including 26 million in France alone. The 2026 race route<\/a> is the longest yet and includes a queen-stage finish atop Mont Ventoux.<\/p>\n

\"\"A finish atop Mont Ventoux is the highlight of the 2026 Tour de France Femmes route. <\/p>\n

The increase in the UCI\u2019s mandated minimum salary for women cyclists has also helped increase the attraction of the sport for women, with Zwift\u2019s report pointing to an increase from \u20ac15,000 in 2020 to \u20ac31,728 in 2025 for Women\u2019s WorldTour riders and an average 2024 salary of \u20ac40,000.<\/p>\n

Canyon\/\/SRAM zondacrypto\u2019s Anastasiya Kolesava says that the increase in pay has been matched by an increase in competitiveness: \u201cTo be honest, it\u2019s insane how everything has changed. So many riders are now super strong on the climbs and the speeds we race at are so much higher \u2013 even if there is generally a lot more climbing in races \/ stages now,\u201d she states.<\/p>\n

The Cyclists\u2019 Alliance<\/a>, set up to provide an independent voice for women\u2019s professional cycling, highlights that gains are in large part confined to the top tier of the women\u2019s sport, though.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Its survey of women riders revealed that 84% of riders in third-tier Continental teams earned under \u20ac20,000 and 42% had a second job to make ends meet, and highlighted a poor career pathway for riders.<\/p>\n

\"PaulinePauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot’s \u20ac50,000 for winning the Tour de France Femmes was a tenth of the prize awarded to Tadej Poga\u010dar. Tim de Wale \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

There\u2019s increasing parity in prize money for races, though, with some one-day races and stage races, including the Amstel Gold Race and Tour Down Under and all races organised by Flanders Classics, offering equal prize money for men and women.<\/p>\n

The Tour de France continues to favour male riders, though, with Tadej Poga\u010dar winning 10 times<\/a> Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot\u2019s \u20ac50,000 and a men\u2019s Tour prize pot of over \u20ac2.5m versus \u20ac259,430 for the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UCI has announced that an equal number of qualification places will be available for men and women…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-342992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}