The Madison is a relay race event in track cycling, named after the first Madison Square Garden in New York, and known as the "American race" in French (course à l'américaine) and as Americana in Spanish and in Italian.

The race

The Madison is a race in which the team which completes the most laps wins. Tied positions are split by points awarded for placings at a series of sprints at intervals during the race. Teams usually have two riders but occasionally three. Riders in each team take turns, with only one rider per team racing at any time. After resting, riders can return to the race. To take over, the replacement rider has to be touched, pushed, often on the shorts, or hurled by the departing team member by a hand-sling. How long each rider stays in the race is for the rider's team to decide. Originally, riders took stints of several hours and the resting rider could sleep or have a meal. That was easier in earlier six-day races because hours could pass without riders attempting to break away from the others. As races became more intensive, both riders from a team began riding simultaneously, one going fast on the shortest racing line around the base of the track and the other idling higher up until that rider's turn to take over. Modern six-day races last less than 12 hours a day and the Madison is now only a featured part, so staying on the track throughout is more feasible. The Madison is a feature of six-day races, but it can also be a separate race, as in the Olympic Games. It has its own championships and specialist riders. UCI-sanctioned Madison races have a total distance of 50 km.

History

The Madison began as a way of circumventing laws passed in New York in the US, aimed at restricting the exhaustion of cyclists taking part in six-day races. According to a contemporary newspaper clipping retained by Major Taylor: "The riders are becoming peevish and fretful. The wear and tear upon their nerves and their muscles, and the loss of sleep make them so. If their desires are not met with on the moment, they break forth with a stream of abuse. Nothing pleases them. These outbreaks do not trouble the trainers with experience, for they understand the condition the men are in." The condition included delusions and hallucinations. Riders wobbled and frequently fell. But the riders were often well paid, especially since more people came to watch them as their condition worsened. Promoters in New York paid Teddy Hale $5,000 when he won in 1896 and he won "like a ghost, his face as white as a corpse, his eyes no longer visible because they'd retreated into his skull," as one report had it. The New York Times said in 1897: "An athletic contest in which participants 'go queer' in their heads, and strain their powers until their faces become hideous with the tortures that rack them, is not sport. It is brutality. Days and weeks of recuperation will be needed to put the Garden racers in condition, and it is likely that some of them will never recover from the strain." Alarmed, New York and Illinois ruled in 1898 that no competitor could race for more than 12 hours a day. The promoter of the event at Madison Square Garden, reluctant to close his stadium for half the day, realized that giving each rider a partner with whom he could share the racing meant the race could still go on 24 hours a day but that no one rider would exceed the 12-hour limit. Speeds rose, distances grew, crowds increased, money poured in. Where Charlie Miller rode 2,088 mi alone, the Australian Alf Goullet and a decent partner could ride 2,790 mi. The fastest known average speed of a Madison men's race is 59.921 km/h, achieved by the Australian duo of Sam Welsford and Leigh Howard, at the world cup race in Glasgow, United Kingdom, 9 November 2019.

Origins of the name Madison Racing

The term Madison Racing derives essentially from a sequence of local New York City names honoring President James Madison. A lodge had been built at what was then the prominent and northernmost waypoint into and out of New York City. In honor of the recently deceased president, the cottage was named Madison Cottage. After the demise of Madison cottage, the site gave rise to a park, in turn named Madison Square, which remains today. A series of four sports venues subsequently took their names from Madison Square — each named, one after the other, ''Madison Square Gardens. '' The first two were located directly adjacent to (and took their name from) Madison Square. The second Madison Square Gardens (1890-1925) became a prominent cycling venue, and gave rise to the track cycle racing that ultimately carried the name Madison Racing.

The full rules

The official rules of the Madison, which are traditionally regarded as being hard to follow, are stated as follows by British Cycling, the British Governing Body of Cycling:

Olympics

The Madison was an Olympic event for men in 2000, 2004 and 2008, but was dropped ahead of the 2012 London Olympics, in part for reasons of gender equality as there was no equivalent race for women at that time. In June 2017, the International Olympic Committee announced that the Madison would be added to the Olympic programme for the 2020 Summer Olympics. The 2020 Games includes a relaunch of the men's Madison event, as well as the introduction of the women's Madison as an Olympic event for the first time. The inaugural women's event was won by Katie Archibald and Laura Kenny for Team GB.

Records

Points

Times