The 2021 UCI Junior Track World Championships in Cairo

"Welcome to Egypt!" is a phrase you hear in the streets, restaurants, hotels and markets all over the country, as the warm-hearted people of this ancient land open their arms to visitors from around the world. In September 2021 it was said to several hundred young track cyclists and their coaches. Cairo was hosting the UCI Junior Track Cycling World Championships, the first time the event had been staged on the African continent.

A championship that waited for its moment

The championships were awarded to Cairo and the Egyptian Cycling Federation, with the newly completed velodrome in the sports complex around Cairo International Stadium in Nasr City as the venue. Nasr City is the district north-east of the city centre, between downtown and the airport. Early plans, published on the original event website, gave the dates as 5 to 9 April 2021. The pandemic changed the calendar for almost every sport that year, and the championships were moved to late summer. Racing finally took place from 1 to 5 September 2021, with teams arriving in the final days of August for training.

That made Cairo the 46th edition of the junior worlds. The 2020 edition had not taken place, so for many riders in their final junior year this was the only chance they would ever have to race for a junior rainbow jersey.

Who came

Ten days before the start, the organising committee announced that more than 40 national federations had confirmed entries. The list mixed the powerhouses of junior track racing, such as Germany, Italy, France, Russia, the Czech Republic, Canada and the United States, with a strong African presence: South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Burundi, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Côte d'Ivoire, Morocco, Algeria and South Sudan among them, plus host nation Egypt. For a sport whose junior championships have mostly been held in Europe, that was a striking picture, and it was one of the main arguments for bringing the event to Africa in the first place.

The programme

Juniors race the full world championship programme: eleven events for men and eleven for women. Sessions were planned as one block per day in the late afternoon and evening, when Cairo's heat eases, with warm-ups on the track beforehand. The UCI set the official training and competition schedule once entries were complete.

Sprint events	Endurance events
Sprint	Individual pursuit
Team sprint	Team pursuit
Keirin	Points race
Time trial (1 km men, 500 m women)	Scratch race
	Omnium
	Madison
	Elimination race

If any of those formats are unfamiliar, our guide to track cycling events explains every one of them in plain language.

How it went

Riders from the Russian federation, competing under the neutral "RCF" name because of the anti-doping sanctions in force at the time, dominated the medal table with 14 gold medals. Germany collected the most silver medals, Italy won ten medals in all, and Canada, the Czech Republic, the United States and South Africa all left with world titles. South Africa's gold in the men's elimination race was a fitting result for the first junior worlds on African soil. The full list of champions, and what happened to them next, is in our results and riders to watch article.

The organisers' closing reports, published on the original site in English and French, described teams praising the organisation and visiting the city's monuments before flying home. Delegations took organised tours to the pyramids and Islamic Cairo between sessions, which is exactly what we would recommend: our Cairo visitor guide lists the sights they saw.

Why it mattered

• A new venue on the map. A modern 250 m indoor-style track in Cairo gave Africa an international-standard velodrome. Read more about the velodrome in Nasr City.
• A proof of concept. Staging a world championship with travel restrictions still in place showed that Egypt could host international cycling.
• The next generation. Several Cairo medallists were winning elite medals within a year or two. That pipeline is the subject of from junior worlds to elite careers.