{"id":437078,"date":"2026-02-21T01:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T01:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/437078\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T01:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T01:24:09","slug":"the-2028-olympic-road-race-might-be-the-hardest-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/437078\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2028 Olympic road race might be the hardest ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

News & Racing<\/a><\/p>\n

A leaked map of the route shows it’s a tour of some of Los Angeles’ best \u2013\u00a0and hilliest \u2013 riding terrain.<\/p>\n

\"Joe<\/p>\n

Kristof Ramon, Gruber Images, Cor Vos<\/p>\n

As the 2026 Winter Olympics wraps up this weekend, attention will turn to the next Games, scheduled for Los Angeles, California, in July 2028. While the event is still more than two years away, preparations are proceeding quickly, among them mapping out a route for cycling’s showcase event, the road race.<\/p>\n

A leaked document obtained by Escape Collective shows a preliminary route for the men’s and women’s road race courses. While not yet final, the routes \u2013 if used on race day (July 22 for women, July 23 for men) \u2013\u00a0could be the hardest in Olympic history.<\/p>\n

According to the document, the women’s route will be 163 km (101.2 miles) and feature 2,950 meters (9,678 feet) of elevation gain. The men’s route is a Monument-like 251 km (156 miles) that will see riders tackle 5,010 meters (16,437 feet) of climbing. For perspective, the men’s and women’s race courses are roughly the same distance as Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge and (men’s) Il Lombardia, the hardest one-day races on the WorldTour, but with slightly more climbing (200-600 meters, depending on race, year, and route). <\/p>\n

Note: This file shows the women’s route with one lap of the Rock Store circuit. Due to how Strava maps the circuit, the total distance and elevation here is different than the route document.<\/p>\n

This post is for paying subscribers only
\n Subscribe now<\/a><\/p>\n

Already have an account? Sign in<\/a><\/p>\n

Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n

\n \ud83d\udc4dYep
\n \ud83d\udc4eNope\n <\/p>\n

\n News & Racing<\/a>
\n Olympics<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"News & Racing A leaked map of the route shows it’s a tour of some of Los Angeles’…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-437078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}