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Your guide to Australian cycling at Birmingham 2022

27 Jul 2022 | 05:00 PMBy: Australian Cycling Team

The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games are nearly upon us.

Hopes will be high for the Australian Cycling Team after a stellar performance at Gold Coast 2018 yielded 23 medals, including 14 gold.

We’ll be publishing in-depth previews for each discipline, so stay tuned. For now, here’s our overall guide to cheering on our Aussie cyclists in the green and gold.

By the numbers:

22nd edition of the Commonwealth Games
5,000+ athletes will compete from 72 nations
26 cycling gold medals will be awarded: 20 on the track, two in mountain bike, four on the road
34 cyclists will represent Australia, including 23 on debut
3rd Games for Matthew Glaetzer, Rohan Dennis, Luke Durbridge and Daniel McConnell

Track Cycling

Track cycling involves riding at high speeds on a purpose-designed indoor velodrome. One lap of the track is 250m long. Track bicycles have a fixed gear and no brakes.

There will be eight track cycling events at Birmingham 2022: team sprint, team pursuit, individual pursuit, scratch race, points race, keirin, sprint and time trial – with tandem para-cycling included in the latter two events.

Lee Valley VeloPark in London will host the track competition and will be the only venue outside of the Midlands region at the Games.

Australia will enter as gold-medal favourites in several events including the men’s team sprint (Leigh Hoffman, Matthew Richardson, Matthew Glaetzer), women’s individual pursuit (Maeve Plouffe) and women’s 500m time trial (Kristina Clonan).

With serious medal ambitions, two young endurance squads will take to the boards in the team pursuit on Friday before turning their attention to the bunch races in the following days.

Matthew Glaetzer cycling for Australia in the Commonwealth Games — *Sprinter Matt Glaetzer will be aiming for his third consecutive gold medal in the keirin. (Photo: Michael Willson)*

Glaetzer, Richardson and Clonan will lead the way for our sprint contingent off the back of impressive UCI Track Nations Cup results in recent months, particularly from Western Australia’s Richardson.

The para-cycling quartet of Jessica Gallagher and Caitlin Ward (pilot), and Beau Wootton and Luke Zaccaria (pilot) should also be on your radar. The tandems will be ripping around Lee Valley VeloPark on Days 1 and 3 of the Birmingham 2022 track cycling schedule.

Track cycling schedule

Day 1 – Friday, July 29 (19:00–22:00 AEST) & Saturday, July 30 (01:00–03:30 AEST)

Women's Tandem B - Sprint
Men's Tandem B - 1000m Time Trial
Women's 4000m Team Pursuit
Men's 4000m Team Pursuit
Women's Team Sprint
Men's Team Sprint

Day 2 – Saturday, July 30 (19:00–22:00 AEST) & Sunday, July 31 (01:00–04:00 AEST)

Women's 3000m Individual Pursuit
Men's 4000m Individual Pursuit
Women's Sprint
Men's Keirin

Day 3 – Sunday, July 31 (19:00–22:00 AEST) & Monday, August 1 (00:00–04:30 AEST)

Men's Tandem B Sprint
Women's Tandem B - 1000m Time Trial
Women's 25km Points Race
Women's 500m Time Trial
Men's Sprint
Men's 15km Scratch Race

Day 4 – Monday, August 1 (23:00–04:00 AEST)

Men's 1000m Time Trial
Women's 10km Scratch Race
Women's Keirin
Men's 40km Points Race

Australian track cycling team

Georgia Baker, Kristina Clonan, Sophie Edwards, Jessica Gallagher, Breanna Hargrave, Alessia McCaig, Chloe Moran, Maeve Plouffe, Alyssa Polites, Sarah Roy, Caitlin Ward, Tom Cornish, Josh Duffy, Graeme Frislie, Matthew Glaetzer, Leigh Hoffman, Conor Leahy, James Moriarty, Luke Plapp, Matthew Richardson, Beau Wootton, Luke Zaccaria

Mountain Bike

Mountain bike cross-country will make its fifth appearance at the Commonwealth Games, taking place in Cannock Chase Forest, north of Birmingham.

Cross-country courses include a variety of terrain such as single-file tracks, rock gardens, steep climbs and technical descents. Each race is a mass-start event over 40–50km for men and 30–40km for women, with the first rider across the line being the winner.

Mountain bike is the only cycling discipline in which Australia has never won a gold medal.

Three riders will wear the green and gold for Australia: 21-year-olds Sam Fox and Zoe Cuthbert, and veteran Daniel McConnell, who claimed bronze at Glasgow 2014.

Fox and Cuthbert will go into their debut Commonwealth Games with confidence after their recent top-10 results in the UCI MTB World Cup.

Mountain bike schedule

MTB Cross-Country – Wednesday, August 3 (20:30–01:00 AEST)

Australian MTB team

Zoe Cuthbert, Sam Fox, Daniel McConnell

Road Cycling

Ambitions will be high after Australia swept the road events at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

The road program features two disciplines: the individual time trial, where each competitor rides by themselves aiming to post the fastest time on the clock; and the road race, a mass-start event where the first across the line wins.

Grace Brown and two-time world champion Rohan Dennis will lead Aussie hopes for the time trials in Wolverhampton. The men will race 37km while the women’s course is 29km long.

Grace Brown representing Australia in a cycling road race — *Grace Brown will ride the time trial and road races. (Photo: Russ Ellis)*

The road races will complete the cycling program over a mostly flat 16km circuit around Warwick, south-east of Birmingham. The women’s peloton will cover seven laps (112km). The men will race 10 laps (160km).

Six Aussie men and six women will aim to defend the 2018 titles of Steele von Hoff and Chloe Hosking.

Watch out for Caleb Ewan if the men’s race finishes in a bunch sprint, while Brodie Chapman and Alexandra Manly have had impressive seasons on the road.

Road cycling schedule

Time Trial – Thursday, August 4 (19:00–01:00 AEST)
Road Race – Sunday, August 7 (17:00–02:00 AEST)

Australian road cycling team

Grace Brown, Brodie Chapman, Alexandra Manly, Ruby Roseman-Gannon, Sarah Roy, Georgia Baker, Sam Fox, Rohan Dennis, Caleb Ewan, Luke Durbridge, Miles Scotson

How to watch the racing

In Australia, you can watch all the cycling from Birmingham 2022 on Seven and 7plus – live, free and in HD.

7plus will be showing up to 30 live and replay channels, so you can follow your favourite events and catch up on highlights. For streaming, visit the 7plus Commonwealth Games Hub. There are specific streaming pages for track cycling, mountain bike and road cycling.

AusCycling will post event previews and reports throughout the Games on our website.