Cycling at the 1900 Summer Olympics – Men's sprint

Men's sprint at the Games of the II Olympiad
Cycling Sprint 1900.jpg The final: Albert Taillandier (France), Fernand Sanz (France) and John Henry Lake (USA)
Venue	Vélodrome de Vincennes
Dates	September 11 (heats and quarterfinals) September 13 (semifinals and final)
Competitors	69 from 6 nations
Medalists
Albert Taillandier  France   Fernand Sanz  France   John Henry Lake  United States
«1896	1906 (Intercalated Games)» 1908 (Summer Olympics)»

Cycling at the 1900 Summer Olympics
Track cycling
Sprint	men
25 kilometres	men
Points race	men

The men's sprint was one of the cycling in the 1900 Summer Olympics. It was on 11 September and 13 September. The sprint was a 2000-metre race. The heats (or first round) was 1000-metres. There was 4 heats. There were 72 cyclists in these Summer Olympics. 69 of these were in the sprint. The cyclists were from 6 differentnations. The event was won by Albert Taillandier of France. This was France's second win in the men's sprint. Fernand Sanz was in second place. John Henry Lake of the United States won America's first cycling medal. He was in 3rd place.

This was the 2nd time this event was in the Olympics.This event has been at every Olympics except for 1904 and 1912. None of the cyclists from 1896 were in the 1900 cyclists.

2 of the best 3 sprinters in 1900 were French. They were both in this olympics. These athletes were Ferdinand Vasserot and Albert Taillandier. An American had also gotten 2nd in the world championships. This athlete was John Henry Lake. He was the most famous athlete that was not French.^[1]

This was the first time that Belgium, Bohemia, Italy and the United States was in this event. This was the second time that France and Germany were in this event. They were also in this event in 1896.

The sprint was very different than the sprint happens in the modern day. The heats were very large. These heats had up to 8 cyclists. The first heats was a kilometre long. The best 3 cyclists in the heats went to the quarterfinals. The quarterfinals were also 1 kilometre long. The fastest cyclist in that quarterfinals went to the semifinals. The semifinals were also 1 kilometre long. The fastest cyclist in that semifinal went to the finals. The finals were 2 kilometres long^[1]

The records for the sprint were the time trial are for 200 metres.

^* World records were not written down by the UCI until 1954.

Lloyd Hildebrand set the first record of 15.4. This was in the 1st heat. In the 2nd heat, Adolphe Cayron beat that time. His time was 14.2 seconds. In the 6th heat, John Henry Lake had 14.0 seconds. In the 9th heat, Antonio Restelli beat that time. His time was 13.6 seconds. In the 1st quarterfinal, Lake beat that time. His time was 13.2 seconds. In the 4th heat, Restelli beat another record. Hid time was 13.0. In the 5th heat, Albert Taillandier had 12.6 seconds in his round. This was the record for the rest of the 1900 games.^[1]

• International Olympic Committee medal winners database
• De Wael, Herman. Herman's Full Olympians: "Cycling - track 1900". Accessed 19 March 2006. Available electronically at Archived 27 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine.
• Mallon, Bill (1998). The 1900 Olympic Games, Results for All Competitors in All Events, with Commentary. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. ISBN 0-7864-0378-0.