The UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) has today approved the establishment of price caps for track cycling equipment at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games.
The UCI management committee announced the decision as part of a press release today after meeting for its third ordinary session of the year at the World Road Championships in Kigali, Rwanda.
Until now, nations competing on the track have been required to register the equipment they use with the UCI ahead of the Olympics and use the equipment in competition several months beforehand. These rules came into play ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Those rules were designed to level the playing field to a degree, so a nation couldn't turn up to the Olympic Games with a new product that might offer a dramatic competitive advantage, or a prototype that hadn't been sufficiently safety tested.
However, the existing registration rules don't take cost and pricing into account. For a long time now, components used by nations on the track have had to be commercially available, so that, in theory, anyone could order a certain frame or set of handlebars used by another nation, for example, if they had the cash. Article 1.3.006 in the UCI Technical Regulations states, "Upon expiry of the authorised prototype period (12 months), the equipment must be commercially available."
In reality, the rules allow nations and federations that produce their own bikes (a key difference from private road trade teams with sponsorship agreements) to price equipment so expensively, or make the buying process so obscure, that it essentially makes it unobtainable.
What is the price cap and will it stunt technological progress?
At the moment, we don't know what the price cap figures will look like. The new rules will come into force from the 1st of January 2027, so it may be a while longer before hard figures are announced.
Some track bikes used at the Olympics by nations currently cost tens of thousands of dollars.
For instance, a version of the Great Britain Hope HB.T bike is listed at £25,000 per frameset, which doesn't include any other components like handlebars or disc wheels.
The FES (Institut für Forschung und Entwicklung von Sportgeräten), which is the German Institute for Research and Development of Sports Equipment, has long produced 'FES' branded bikes for German track teams. The B20 model is listed at €28,392 for the frameset only. In an even more extreme example, the Australian team rode aboard the Factor Hanzo Track, which at the time of the Paris Games was priced at $100,000.
And elsewhere, the Cervélo and Felt track bikes aren't even listed on the brands' websites, indicating a special order is required, demonstrating the difficulty some prospective customers might have in trying to purchase one of these highly specialised machines.
Budgets vary in track cycling, and these rules could help to level the playing field for nations with smaller equipment budgets.
However, track bikes have only been getting more specialised and outlandish over the past several years. A lot may depend on what the new price cap figures are; a high ceiling may not change too much, but smaller maximum price caps could affect manufacturer development and profits, or change which brands nations use if their equipment needs to fall within the stipulated maximum prices.
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