It is always a delicate exercise to look back over more than a century of history and try to discern a pathway, a destiny, a meaning. In 125 years, the UCI has experienced highs and lows, deserts, sporting and technological changes, political and health crises and, like the sport it governs, has taken steep roads and negotiated banked turns. However, there are some obvious paradoxes that speak volumes about a journey that undoubtedly deserves to be ranked in a class of its own.
It might seem paradoxical, for example, to see this sport, which since its inception has called for improvements in the conditions of roads and their surfaces, organising the UCI Gravel World Championships 122 years after the creation of its international body, on stony paths reminiscent of the misfortunes of the pioneers of the road at the beginning of the last century. It seems that the younger cyclists feel a sort of nostalgia for their glorious predecessors and that they are willing, indeed desire, to affront the same challenging conditions.
It is equally interesting to trace a large loop between the creation of the UCI in 1900, on the sidelines of the UCI Track World Championships – the only discipline to have its World Championships at the time – in Paris and the 2024 Olympic Games in the same city, where cycling showed unprecedented unity and maturity, as if it had reached the age of reason. This full circle reveals something of the path followed for a century and a quarter... For better or for worse, by trying to stay the course on the long and eventful river of its existence, the UCI has ended up calming the storms, bringing together divergent interests, gathering disparate and sometimes rival disciplines into a single, family unit, and making a coherent whole out of a huge jumble. What's more, these 125 years have shown that cycling, while constantly evolving, has remained true to itself and continues to be inspired by the same values: effort and surpassing oneself, of course, but also a love of evolutions with respect for tradition, an attraction to technology with a concern for simplicity, an affectionate respect for the past and a keen appetite for the future. The UCI has been trying to embody and guide all this since 1900.
If it is true that dialogue, diverging points of view, and sometimes conflicts, make things happen, then the UCI was born under a lucky star. Its birth in 1900 was, in fact, the result of a confrontation as much cultural as philosophical, a break with the International Cycling Association that was dominated by the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ and anchored in pure and simple amateurism. The often-heated dialogue between amateurism and professionalism was also the first founding principle of the UCI. Sometimes the ‘pros’ took the lead, like at the Nürburgring in Germany in 1927, when Alfredo Binda won the first professional road World Championships, and event so desired by the UCI but which race organisers had feared. Sometimes amateurism took over, as in 1965, when the International Olympic Committee, a sanctuary of sport in its purest form, imposed the split between the International Amateur Cycling Federation (FIAC) and the International Federation of Professional Cycling (FICP), with the UCI becoming a simple liaison office between the two worlds. Then, in 1993, with the support of IOC President Juan-Antonio Samaranch, Hein Verbruggen brought these two de facto inseparable branches of the cycling family under the same roof. From then on, the institution's mission became clearer: to unify and harmonise, while welcoming with open arms the new arrivals of the cycling brood.
And these new arrivals were numerous. 1921 heralded the first UCI Road World Championships for amateurs. In 1930, the UCI Indoor Cycling World Championships were held for the first time in Leipzig, Germany. In 1950, Charenton-le-Pont, near Paris was the venue for the first UCI World Championships for cyclo-cross, a discipline that has enjoyed a clear resurgence in recent years. In 1958, women's cycling was finally invited to the family table, and we will come back to that... In 1985 - forty years ago already - BMX Racing joined the UCI when the UCI World Championships were organised in Italy despite a federal dispute settled six years later. Two years later, trials had its World Championships in Berga (Spain). In 1990, it was the turn of mountain bike to bring new blood and diversity. The family has grown steadily since then, with UCI Worlds for road time trial in 1994, para-cycling in 2006, BMX Freestyle and Urban Cycling in 2017 - the year the current UCI President David Lappartient arrived at the head of the institution -, cycling esport in 2020, gravel in 2022 and finally snow bike in 2024. On the track too, the programme has expanded with, in particular, the integration alongside the sprint, of the pursuit and points race in 1993, the women's keirin and scratch race in 2002, the omnium in 2007 (men) and 2009 (women), the women's Madison in 2017 and the elimination races in 2021.
Today, the entire world cycling programme is finally unified and gender-balanced, which enabled the first family reunion in 2023 in Glasgow, where almost all cycling disciplines were able to compete in their UCI World Championships at the same time and in the same place. This communion, desired and conceived by David Lappartient, will be repeated every four years in the pre-Olympic year.
The cycling family is rich in its diversity, but also in its disagreements and, here again, in the last 125 years, its members have sometimes been torn apart, particularly in road cycling, where the tradition of events that are more than a century old has sometimes clashed with the desire, of the UCI among others, for harmonisation and simplification. It is clear that since the UCI Road World Cup, created in 1989 by Hein Verbruggen and which largely contributed to the globalisation of the discipline, the sometimes-strong tensions have subsided and that the UCI ProTour, created in 2005, and even more so the UCI WorldTour, in place since 2011, appeared to be unanimously accepted. Since 2016, the UCI Women's WorldTour has also been accompanying the irresistible rise of women's road cycling. This could well be the last project to be completed in order to achieve perfect equality desired by all.
Every family has its crises, and cycling has certainly not been spared in 125 years. Doping has wreaked havoc throughout the sporting world, but cycling, which is more exposed, has been among the sports most affected. Its very survival was at stake, and the UCI, despite criticism, has been a pioneer in reacting and putting in place effective tools to fight cheaters, but also to restore the image of cycling. It was thus the first to outsource the fight against doping with the creation in 2008 of the Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation (CADF), before delegating its operational anti-doping activities to the International Testing Agency (ITA) in 2021.
Still in 2008, the governing body of cycling was again a pioneer when it introduced the biological passport. The imagination of cheats proving to be limitless, it was technological fraud that the UCI then vigorously combated by implementing a large-scale policy from 2016, reinforced from 2018, to stem this phenomenon.
As well as the harmony between amateurs and professionals and increasing gender-parity in the sport, another striking dynamic in the 125-year history of the UCI is the globalisation of cycling. While five National Federations were behind the creation of the institution in 1900, today there are 205, grouped into five Continental Confederations. The UCI also organises competitions all over the world, and the organisation of the UCI Road World Championships in Kigali in 2025, under the impetus of David Lappartient, who wanted the UCI's annual flagship event to take place in Africa for the first time that year, is the culmination of this opening up to the world. It is also worth noting that 48 nations have won medals on the track and 34 on the road since the creation of the UCI World Championships for these two disciplines.
This large family needed a common home, and this was achieved in 2002 when the UCI World Cycling Centre opened its doors in Aigle to become the headquarters of the UCI, but also a place for competition, education, training, development and promotion for all those involved in a sport that is just a tiny bit over 125 years young.