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UCI Announces athlete quotas for road cycling events at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games

Five Canadians will race in the road category

Tokyo 2020

Tokyo 2020

The UCI road cycling athlete quotas for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics have determined that five Canadian athletes will be eligible to compete in events. Which five cyclists will be lining up to race in Tokyo has yet to be announced by the Canadian Olympic Committee. The road cycling UCI nation rankings are based on the performance of a country’s athletes in the 2019 road season. The UCI determines the number of athletes who will compete per country but Cycling Canada decides which athletes will compete. In Tokyo, Canadians were allocated two female athlete slots and three male athlete slots for the road race. Of those racers, one Canadian man and two Canadian women will be competing in the time trial.

The Canadian athlete quotas for road cycling events at the Rio 2016 Olympics were almost identical, with the notable exception of the women’s road race; in Rio they were given three openings as opposed to two this year, a result of the Canadian women’s road team slipping down in the UCI Nation Rankings. At the Rio Olympics six athletes from Canada competed in the road discipline.Tara Whitten achieved the highest Canadian road result, coming in seventh place in the time trial.

For road cycling, the International Olympic Committee allocated 197 athlete slots to the UCI. It was then up to the UCI to decide the breakdown of these slots by gender. This year it decided on 130 slots for men and 67 for women. The Cyclist’s Alliance spoke out against the gender imbalance in the slot allocation. “Although we aren’t surprised, we are disappointed. An equal quota for men and women is high on our agenda.” the organization said, in a tweet which was re-tweeted by Canadian cyclist Leah Kirchmann.