The Union Cycliste Internationale has published the Women’s Olympic Qualification Rankings which are used to allocate the majority of competitors in women’s road race and time trial. Athletes can earn points for their nation in UCI approved events. For the women’s road race initially the top 5 nations earn four athlete quotas, nations ranked 6th to 13th earn three quotas and nations ranked 14th to 22nd earn two quotas. However, if an athlete is ranked in the top 100 in the individual rankings and their nation did not qualify through the nation rankings they will earn their nation a maximum of one quota. The quota is subtracted from the lowest ranked nations (those nations can only lose a maximum of one quota). For the time trial the top 15 nations from the rankings will be allowed to send one athlete which has qualified from the road race. The Women’s Olympic Qualification Rankings are calculated from various events held from June 1st 2015 to May 31st 2016.
For the women’s road race the women’s individual rankings contained 12 nations where athletes finished in the top 100, but their nation did not finished in the top 22 in the nation rankings. They are Chinese Taipei (Huang Ting Ying), Norway (Emile Moberg), Brazil (Flavia Oliveira), Azerbaijan (Olena Pavlukhina), Thailand (Jutatip Maneephan), Austria (Martina Ritter), Slovenia (Polana Batagelj), Lithuania (Daiva Tuslaite), Cyprus (Antri Christoforou), Israel (Shani Bloch), Japan (Mayuko Hagiwara) and Chile (Paola Munoz). This has caused nations ranked from 11 to 22 to lose one quota. Netherlands, United States, Italy, Australia and Germany qualified four athlete quotas. Poland, Sweden, Great Britain, Canada and Belgium qualified three athlete quotas. France, South Africa and Luxembourg qualified two athlete quotas. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Finland, Cuba, New Zealand, Mexico, Switzerland and Spain qualified one athlete quota. Since Cuba qualified through the nation rankings its continental qualifier quota was reallocated to the next best ranked eligible nation from the Pan American qualifier, specifically Venezuela. Also since Brazil qualified one quota through the rankings one of their host quota will be reallocated to the highest ranked nation not yet qualified, Colombia.
The nations which qualified through the women’s time trial are as follows; Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Ukraine and the United States. As a reminder these nations do not gain an athlete quota, they must use athletes which were qualified from the road race. Due to this rule both the Czech Republic and Russia which qualified quotas from the 2015 World Championship do not have enough athletes to fill that spot. The quotas have now been reallocated to the next highest eligible ranked nation from the event, specifically Japan and Sweden.
This was the final opportunity for nations to qualify to the Olympics in all disciplines of cycling. All that is left is for nations to confirm the quotas in which they were given.
Athletes by Nations
- Australia – 4
- Germany – 4
- Italy – 4
- Netherlands – 4
- United States – 4
- Belgium – 3
- Canada – 3
- Great Britain – 3
- Poland – 3
- Sweden – 3
- France – 2
- Luxembourg – 2
- South Africa – 2
- Austria – 1
- Azerbaijan – 1
- Belarus – 1
- Brazil – 1
- Chile – 1
- Chinese Taipei – 1
- Colombia – 1
- Cuba – 1
- Cyprus – 1
- Finland – 1
- Israel – 1
- Japan – 1
- Lithuania – 1
- Mexico – 1
- New Zealand – 1
- Norway – 1
- Russia – 1
- Slovenia – 1
- Spain – 1
- Switzerland – 1
- Thailand – 1
- Ukraine – 1
References