November 21/19 16:39 pm - Road Quotas Announced for 2020 Olympics

Posted by Editor on 11/21/19
 

The UCI has announced the nation quotas for the Road events at next year's Olympics in Tokyo.  The quotas are determined by nation rankings, based on points obtained by riders as of October 27, 2019.

Canada will get two spots each for the women's road race and time trial, and, for the men, three spots in the road race and one in the time trial.  The criteria to decide the quotas is pretty convoluted, so we have included an explanation:

Women

There are a maximum of 67 spots for the women's Road Race (65 based on UCI nation rankings and two for the host nation - Japan), and 25 for the Time Trial.  The maximum number of Road Race spots any nation can receive is four, and the maximum number for the Time Trial is two.

Canada was ranked eighth on October 27th, which meant three spots, however, a provision that allows nations that have an athlete ranked in the top-100 that do not have a quota spot (as part of the top 22 nations), will 'bump' a quota spot from ranked nations - so Canada was one of the countries that lost a spot for the road race.  We could still gain back a road spot if some nations do not confirm they will use all their allocated spots by December 15th.

For the women's Time Trial, the top 15 nations get a spot, so Canada got one that way.  We also had a rider who finished in the top ten nations in the time trial at the Road Worlds this year (Karol-Ann Canuel was 12th, and seventh nation), so we got a second spot.

Men

There are a maximum of 130 spots for the men's Road Race (128 based on UCI nation rankings and two for the host nation - Japan), and 30 for the Time Trial.  The maximum number of Road Race spots any nation can receive is five, and the maximum number for the Time Trial is two.

In the men's ranking, Canada was 20th on October 27th, which entitles us to three spots.  We could have potentially lost a spot to 'bumping' as the women did, but avoided that scenario in the men.

We qualified a spot for the Time Trial by being in the top 30 nations; to get a second spot we would have had to have a rider finish in the top ten nations in the time trial at the Road Worlds this year - our lone entry, Hugo Houle was 27th overall and 19th nation.