UCI Track Champions League: The evolution and precision of track cycling’s timekeeping

In a sport where everything is often decided in less than a second, precise timing is essential in track cycling. As is often the case, science has made considerable progress in refining these measurements over the years.

The ringing of the bell which announces the last lap of the track may sometimes seem anachronistic in the now ultra-technological world of velodromes. Between tradition and modernity, the UCI Track has nevertheless managed to undergo a transformation to maintain its original spirit while tirelessly perfecting its environment. The training techniques have evolved, and so have the bikes, so it was essential that timekeeping was able to keep up with the technology and continue on its crazy trajectory.

Track cycling, by its very nature, has always been a discipline where the gaps between competitors are minimal. Whatever the event (pursuit, keirin, sprint…), victory often comes down to the wire. In these conditions, the science and precision of timing to decide between two neck-and-neck athletes has taken on considerable importance.

Consider the keirin final at the 2020 Track World Championships in Berlin. In the final sprint, no less than six men crossed the line at the same time. Not so long ago, how would we have managed to separate these riders, or isolate the four tenths of a second that separated the winner, Dutchman Harrie Lavreysen, from his runner-up, Japanese rider Yuta Yakimoto?

By today’s standards, the first stopwatches, triggered manually as the riders passed, seem archaic. Aware that track cycling could not be content with approximations and had to be as impartial as possible, the sport has worked to eradicate any risk of human error. Because time, more than ever, decides the outcome. It is time that separates the ties and sets the world records. Since then, the measurement of time has been adapted by technological innovations, enabling us to go even further in terms of precision, day after day.

Stopwatches began by calculating tenths of a second, then hundredths, to arrive today at thousandths, or even ten thousandths of a second. These are truly giant steps forward. The ‘error’ factor no longer exists, eliminating human reaction time from the equation, since both starts and finishes are managed electronically.

Another revolution is the photo finish, in that results can now be obtained in real time. At the 1948 Olympic Games, it took 20 minutes to develop the photo of the finish in a darkroom! With very little standing in the way of technology’s advance, and as it seems to have no limits, we can safely say that timekeeping in track cycling has reached levels of precision unthinkable just a few decades ago.

The sensors placed on the tracks are now capable of distinguishing to a thousandth of a second between two sprinters racing towards the finish line at 60 km/h, which represents a distance of 2 centimeters. Even more impressive, the cameras of the official timers at UCI Track events are capable of capturing 10,000 images per second to produce the photo finish!

Track racing has become so technologically sophisticated that it has long since moved beyond the simple starting and finishing points. Thanks to new timing devices placed all around the oval, all the riders’ times are analysed and dissected to find out where the athlete won or lost the race. Transponders also play a major role in the development of timekeeping.

These small boxes, placed on the back of the bike, link the cyclists to the stopwatch in real time and enable them to be separated, whatever their number on the line. This system is particularly effective in the event of a grouped finish, as in a keirin race, for example. Gone are the days when the judges had to count, one by one, all the riders who crossed the final straight!