The first bicycles were invented in the 1850s and looked quite different to the bikes we know today. But it wasn’t until the 1870s that the first competitions for cycling indoors on wooden tracks were staged, with the first six‑day race taking place in London in 1878. Track cycling quickly grew in popularity and continued to develop with the creation of the International Cycling Association in 1892 and the organisation of the first world championships in Chicago in 1893.
