Canadian cyclists at the London 2012 Olympics

Olympic Calendar:

July 28: Men’s road race, 250 km

July 29: Women’s road race, 140 km

Aug. 2: Men’s time trial, 44 km; women’s time trial, 29 km.

Aug. 2-7: Track

Aug. 9-10: BMX

Aug. 11: Women’s cross-country

Aug. 12: Men’s cross-country

The 2012 London Olympic Games will be almost as much a test of endurance for cycling fans as for the athletes: Cycling events span the entire games, just four out of the 16 days are without two-wheeled competition. Events kick off with the men’s road race on the opening day of the Games and wrap up with the men’s cross-country, just two hours before the closing ceremonies. Here’s what to expect each day, and which Canadian performances to watch for.

July 28, 29 and Aug. 2: Road races and time trials (London and Hampton Court)

The men’s road race, on the opening day, is the second medal event of the 2012 London Olympic Games, after pistol shooting, and it promises to be epic. One hundred and thirty-nine of the world’s best professionals will set off from the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace for a 250 km race into the countryside southwest of the city. There they will do nine laps of a course that includes the narrow, switchback climb up Box Hill before the flat 40 km run back to the finish line at the Mall.

For Michael Barry, 36, veteran of the 1996, 2004 and 2008 Games, the distance will be key. “You have to be performing well in those 200 km plus races earlier in the year,” he says. “The last hour – that’s when the difference is made. If you’re only racing 180 km races or in North America you won’t be able to handle it.” That means racing on the WorldTour, preferably doing three-week stage races like the Tour de France or Giro d’Italia. Crashes also had a major effect in the test event last summer and with the narrow climbs it will be very important for the main contenders to stay near the front and out of trouble.

Although Canada only qualified one spot for London, there are plenty of riders to choose from. Barry and Ryder Hesjedal, 31, have both been racing at the WorldTour level for years. Dominique Rollin, 29, Svein Tuft, 34, and Christian Meier, 27, are also on WorldTour teams this year, and David Veilleux, 24, often races alongside them despite riding for a team one rung lower in the hierarchy. And then there’s Canada’s own SpiderTech powered by C10 team, which is making inroads in European professional racing and includes 11 Canadians, among them Guillaume Boivin, who finished third at the U23 road worlds in 2010 and who consistently placed in the top ten in key European events during the early season.

To make the selection decision even harder, the same rider will also ride the 44 km individual time trial at Hampton Court Palace four days later. Who to pick? A time trial specialist? An all-rounder? A sprinter? Whoever it is, they will face a road course tailor-made for home favourite and defending world champion Mark Cavendish. The flat final 40 km will likely end up in a bunch sprint, and right now Cavendish is the best sprinter in the world.

But the U.K. is limited to five riders, which might not be enough to control the race on their own. “If you’re riding with normal size teams of eight or nine riders you could say it would finish in a field sprint,” says Barry. “At the Olympics it’ll be a lot harder to do that.”

The women’s race the next day will be even tougher to predict. The 140 km race covers the same course as the men, though with just two laps of the Box Hill circuit. Countries are limited to a maximum of four riders, and there will be just 67 women on the start line. With fewer riders to organize a chase, that means a breakaway group could easily spoil the day for the sprinters. For the Canadian women, the focus right now is on qualifying for the Games.

Unlike the men, whose quotas are based on the 2011 rankings, women’s qualification continues until the end of May. While Canada is on track for three starting spots for the road race and two for the 29 km time trial, that will depend on gathering as many International Cycling Union (UCI) ranking points as possible this spring. The problem is, most of the top Canadian women are not riding for UCI teams, so the Canadian Cycling Association (CCA) has had to step in and organize national team projects to key events in Europe and North America, including the Grand Prix Cycliste de Gatineau on the May long weekend.

Once the quotas have been set, selecting the riders will become the focus, and Canada is in the position of having some of the best riders in the world. Clara Hughes, who had already won two cycling Olympic medals before winning another four as a speed skater, Tara Whitten and Rhae-Christie Shaw both finished top-10 in the time trial at the 2010 world championships and Joelle Numainville is formidable road sprinters.

“Clara has obviously shown potential at worlds,” says CCA high performance director Jacques Landry. “She’s shown she’s among the best in the world. We also have two others that are among the best in the world.”

August 2-7: Track (Olympic Velodrome, London)

The UCI has completely overhauled the Olympic track program in the last two Olympiads, eliminating several events and creating the women’s team pursuit and the men’s and women’s omnium. There are now five medal events each for men and women.

The changes have been a boon for Canada, which comes into the Games with a strong shot at three medals in track competition. It’s a novel situation. The nation has won plenty of track medals over the years thanks to some exceptional riders, but has rarely had much depth to its program. “I think we’ve gone in there (in the past) with the hope that something will happen, but this time if we don’t come away with something we’ll be disappointed,” says national team track coach Richard Wooles.

The first medal contender, racing on August 3 and 4, is the women’s team pursuit squad, which startled host nation Great Britain in the final round of the World Cup on the Olympic track in February by pushing them all the way to the finish in the gold medal final. Canada may have ended up with silver, but it didn’t escape anyone’s notice that Tara Whitten, 31, Gillian Carleton, 32, and Jasmin Glaesser, 19, covered the 3,000 m in 3:18.982, just eight-tenths of a second slower than the Brits, a new Canadian record and well under the previous world record.

It was a great result, but even better was that the team was only starting to see its potential. “I would say that we can improve it by another good chunk by London,” says Wooles. “If we’d improved it even a little bit we would have got the Brits [at the World Cup].”

The five riders are fighting for only three available team pursuit spots. Laura Brown and Steph Roorda were part of the program launched by B.C.-based coach Jeremy Storie a little more than two years ago. Glaesser joined the program after immigrating from Germany and multiple world champion Whitten has also committed to the program.

The next to hit the boards is Zach Bell in the men’s omnium on August 4 and 5. The track cycling equivalent of the decathlon, the omnium is made up of six events ranging from 250 m to 30 km, spread over two days. After competing in the points race at the 2004 Games, Bell, 29, has been steadily progressing in his new discipline, winning the overall World Cup standings in 2011 and finishing second at the world championships in the same year. Most recently, he won bronze at the World Cup on the Olympic track in February with a come-from-behind ride after a difficult first day.

Things started well when Bell won the opening event, the flying lap, but he struggled in the points race and the elimination race. “I’m starting to figure out how to race (the elimination) and was executing really well,” Bell recalls. “But then a freak combination of circumstances, the guy on the front slowed down and then seven guys went, whoosh, over the top of me.” Bell fought back with strong rides in the pursuit, scratch race and kilometre to secure the bronze medal.

After a stint racing on the road with Team SpiderTech powered by C10, Bell will be taking the lessons learned to the world championships in Melbourne, Australia in April, which will be his final preparation for the Games.

The next medal hope for Canada is in the women’s omnium on August 6 and 7. Whitten is a clear medal favourite after winning the last two world championships in the discipline, multiple world cups and the points race world title in 2010.

Whitten, Bell and the women’s team pursuit team are all essentially guaranteed qualification for the Games, but Canada also has a chance at qualifying in the men’s team sprint and the women’s individual sprint, depending on the outcome of the Pan Am championships and the worlds, which is good for the future of the track program.

August 9-10: BMX (Olympic Park, London)

When BMX became part of the Olympic program in 2008, Canada was confident it had a shot at a medal in former junior world champion Samantha Cools. But that didn’t happen. Cools was classified seventh in Beijing after crashing out of the final, and never know if she could have placed in the top three. Cools’s experience illustrates the difficult cultural shift that BMX has made in the last few years from a family-friendly, fun sport to the high performance pressure cooker of Olympic status.

But that shift came at just the right time for one rider, 20-year-old Tory Nyhaug of Coquitlam, B.C. Too young to make the team in 2008, he embraced the Olympic challenge and has become an outside chance at a medal in 2012. “The tide is starting to turn, and it’s turning with Tory,” says Landry. “Tory’s riding well, he is a medal contender.”

There isn’t much money in the national team program for BMX, and Nyhaug spends almost the entire year on the road to get the best preparation he can for the Games. “Basically I’ll be in Europe all year,” says Nyhaug from France, where he’s working with his coach, Pierre-Henri Sauze. “Mostly this year I’m just focusing on the World Cups, because that’s the kind of track the Olympics are going to be on.”

With most North American BMX competitions on tight, narrow tracks, it can be tough for riders on this continent to adapt to Olympic-style venues with huge start ramps, massive jumps and wide, fast turns. That won’t be a problem for Nyhaug, who got a taste of the Olympic track last summer at the test event, where he faced everything from rain to shifting wind. Nyhaug finished 10^th after qualifying in fourth. “I think it’s definitely a technical track,” he says. “It flows really nicely. It’s big but it works well. I just want to take one lap at a time. It’s my first Olympics. I just want to have a good race.”

August 11-12: Mountain bike cross-country (Hadleigh Farm, Essex)

Canadian cyclists are poised to end the London Olympics with Catharine Pendrel starting the women’s cross-country on August 11 as the odds-on favourite. It’s easy to see why. Since finishing fourth at the 2008 Games, Pendrel, 31, finished third in the 2009 World Cup standings, won the overall series in 2010 and took her first world title in 2011. She also won the test event on the Olympic circuit at Hadleigh Farm last summer.

“It’s a fast course, with some rock gardens,” says Landry. “The longest climbs are about a minute, minute and a half,  punchy riders are going to be better on that course. [National coach] Dan (Proulx) has identified that and has already started working with the riders accordingly.”

It’s not all about Pendrel. Canada is ranked number one in the world and has a virtual lock on the maximum quota of two riders at the Games. Former Olympic silver medalist Marie-Hélène Prémont, 34, is still racing at a high level and finished  fourth overall in the 2011 World Cup, and eighth-place finisher Emily Batty, 23, continues to progress towards the top level. “We have the luxury, and the burden, of having three women which can fill two spots, and be competitive,” says Landry. “You look at the last worlds and there were three Canadian women that finished in the top 10. It’s going to be a tough decision, definitely.”

The men’s side is a little less clear-cut. Canada’s team is in 11th place, which is good for two spots, but it is at risk of dropping to a single rider before the qualifying deadline on May 23. “We’re not as competitive as the women on the international field,” says Landry. “But given the type of course we have some riders who can put it together on the day.”

Among them are veteran Geoff Kabush, 35, Max Plaxton, 26, and Derek Zandstra, 28. “We’re going to select the best horse for that kind of course,” says Landry. “You also have to base it on consistency, performance on demand, who can deliver. That applies to all the disciplines. There’s basically two weeks in August when athletes are being asked to perform at the best of their lives, and we’re going to select athletes who have demonstrated that.”