Cycling Events

You appear to have a good situation to measure cycling courses. Most inquiries I receive are for Triathlon courses, and they don't really need to be certified. Interesting that the Games wants their cycling courses certified, but that does show they have a desire for accurate courses. At least you won't be marking every mile!

Seems like it would be just like measuring a running-race course; tangents, and all. Probably mark every 5 km? Enjoy it!

Any certificate I would issue would be to USATF standards which nobody on a bicycle could follow.

Do they care that the distance they ride will be "long" or do they care?
It has been my experience that cyclists are more concerned that everyone ride the same distance. Not that the distance is exact.

Here is a course I measured in 1988. It is the only cycling course I ever did, and I had to make up what I thought was a reasonable route. I described it as:

Measurement Method - The three mile course was measured as though the runners had full use of the entire road.

The 14.91 mile bike course was measured staying about 3 feet from the right hand side of the road. About 100 yards from each corner, the measurement took the shortest route around the corner, then gradually drifted right for about 100 yards until once again 3 feet from the edge.

The course map is shown below.

Very few cycle race routes would be measured for certification, it is not a requirement of the UCI or National governing bodies (USA Cycling). I have been a Commissaire (race official) at road races, time trials, criteriums, for road, mountain bike and cyclocross, never has a race used a measured distance.

Suspect some may consider measuring for an accurate distance, but these will be few and far between. We should note of the many races run every week, seldom are they measured for certification? many are National level, qualifiers for International events.

In the early 1980's, when I was RRTC Chairman, I contacted U. S. Cycling Federation to explore helping them set up a standard for the measurement of cycling courses. I was unable to find anyone who was interested.