page_title: Road bicycle racing
section_title: Notable bicycle races
hierarchical_section_title: Road bicycle racing / Notable bicycle races
caption_attribution_description: English: Riders in the 1991 Giro d'Italia climbing Sestriere on stage 13, Savigliano-Sestriere, 192 km. Included in the group are Mario Cipollini, Greg LeMond, Laurent Fignon and Franco Ballerini.
context_page_description: Road bicycle racing is the cycle sport discipline of road cycling, held on paved roads. Road racing is the most popular professional form of bicycle racing, in terms of numbers of competitors, events and spectators. The two most common competition formats are mass start events, where riders start simultaneously and race to set finish point; and time trials, where individual riders or teams race a course alone against the clock. Stage races or "tours" take multiple days, and consist of several mass-start or time-trial stages ridden consecutively.
  Professional racing has been most popular in Western Europe, centered historically on France, Spain, Italy and the Low Countries. Since the mid-1980s the sport has diversified with professional races now held on all continents of the globe. Semi-professional and amateur races are also held in many countries. The sport is governed by the Union Cycliste Internationale. As well as the UCI's annual World Championships for men and women, the biggest event is the Tour de France, a three-week race that can attract over 500,000 roadside supporters a day.
caption: GT: 1991 Giro d'Italia.
exif: {"Image Make": "FUJI PHOTO FILM CO., LTD.", "Image Model": "SP-2000", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "FDi V4.5 / FRONTIER350/370-7.6-0J-922N", "Image DateTime": "2008:06:29 10:46:30", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "8", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "744", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "13374", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": ":  :     :  :", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:06:29 10:46:30", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF Tag 0x920C": "321103", "EXIF Tag 0x920D": "27", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1071", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "372", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed"}