EBENEZERBreaking
The race was at its peak when American riders were regularly challenging for titles. Its return could help prompt a revival
Read full story on theguardian.com →
Sport — Michael Venutolo-Mantovani
After a decade-long absence, the beloved Philadelphia International Cycling Classic is set to return this weekend, with some of the world’s best bike-racing teams taking to the famous circuit around the city’s leafy Art Museum, Manayunk, and Roxborough areas on Sunday.
The race is one of just a handful of events on American soil sanctioned by UCI, cycling’s international governing body, and will feature squads such as EF Education EasyPost, Lidl-Trek, Lotto-Intermarché, and Jayco AlUla in the men’s race, and powerhouses CANYON//SRAM zondacrypto and Human Powered Health in the women’s event. It is classified as a 1.1 race, meaning it’s two levels below the top-flight WorldTour, whose races include the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
The race will retrace its celebrated 14.4-mile loop, starting on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, roaring past the city’s famous art museum, snaking along the Schuykill River, through Fairmount Park, and into the Manayunk neighborhood, where the race’s most famous segment awaits. It’s a short but brutal climb, known as “The Wall,” that averages a leg-crushing 17% of incline and has become synonymous with the Philly Classic. So synonymous in fact, that Manayunk officially designated the stretch of road as the “Manayunk Wall” in 2002.
After tackling The Wall, the racers will head back toward the Ben Franklin Parkway only to do it all over again. The men’s peloton will complete eight laps of the circuit, totaling 124 miles. The women will complete 62 miles. Those distance totals make a bit more sense on the metric scale, as they equal 200km and 100km, respectively.
Beyond the headline-grabbing rebirth of this famous American race, the new iteration of the Philly Classic is being lauded for offering equal prize money for both the men’s and women’s races. At $75,000 each for both the men’s and women’s races, the total prize money is double the minimum for a UCI race at this level. However, parity is nothing new for this race, which offered equal prizes as far back as 2013.
Lisa Nutter, a world champion track cyclist and the wife of Philadelphia’s mayor, originally pushed for equal pay between the genders.
“Mayor [Michael] and Lisa Nutter were very adamant that we should have prize parity back then,” the race’s director, Robin Morton, said. “And so, we felt that we needed to continue that tradition and make sure the men and the women got paid the same.”
The race, which originally ran from 1985 to 2016 (with a women’s race being added in 1994, known as the “Liberty Classic” through 2012) , hit its zenith in stride with the rest of American cycling. That is to say, around the time Lance Armstrong was winning seven Tours de France, all of which were vacated after Armstrong admitted to doping. That era was not only the result of Armstrong’s dominance and subsequent fame but also of the seeds that were planted in American cycling in the 1980s, thanks to the success of racers such as Greg LeMond, a three-time winner of the Tour de France, and Ohio native Andy Hampsten, who won the 1988 Giro d’Italia.
It was in the early 1980s that the United States began to foster a domestic racing scene, eventually hosting marquee races such as the Coors Classic, the Ore-Ida Women’s Challenge, the Tour de Georgia, the San Francisco Grand Prix, the Tour of California and of course, the Philly Classic.
Past winners of the men’s race include 11-time-Tour de France stage winner André Greipel, Armstrong, American cycling legend George Hincapie, and 1995 American national champion Norm Alvis. The women’s race was dominated in the late 1990s and early 2000s by five-time winner and Olympic gold medalist Petra Rossner, and counts two-time world champion Giorgia Bronzini and American standout Evelyn Stevens as past winners.
Today, the United States hosts just a few UCI-sanctioned road races: the Redlands Bicycle Classic, the Tour of the Gila, the Maryland Cycling Classic, and the Tour of Arkansas, formerly known as the Joe Martin Stage Race. Adding the Philadelphia International Cycling Classic to that list is a huge step forward for American cycling, which has shifted its focus from road racing toward criterium racing and gravel racing over the last two decades. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s a huge step backwards, to that brief stretch in American sports history when cycling was at its peak and the US was a major player on the world scene.
The Philadelphia Cycling Classic will be livestreamed on Channel 6 ABC, with the women’s race kicking off at 8.30am Eastern. The men will follow at 12.30pm. Of course, you could always trek to Philly and become part of the party yourself. I highly recommend snagging a spot somewhere along The Wall.
The race is one of just a handful of events on American soil sanctioned by UCI, cycling’s international governing body, and will feature squads such as EF Education EasyPost, Lidl-Trek, Lotto-Intermarché, and Jayco AlUla in the men’s race, and powerhouses CANYON//SRAM zondacrypto and Human Powered Health in the women’s event. It is classified as a 1.1 race, meaning it’s two levels below the top-flight WorldTour, whose races include the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Michael Venutolo-Mantovani. Published 27 Aug 2026, 09:00 am.
Most relevant
Join our writers for over-by-over updates from day one of the second Test at Lord’s
Read on theguardian.com →
