Women in Sports: Cycling
Updated February 21, 2017 | Factmonster Staff 
- Cycling was included in the first modern Olympic games but it wasn't until 1984 that women were allowed to participate in this event.
- In Los Angeles at the 1984 Olympics, Connie Carpenter Phinney of Madison, Wisconsin, won a medal for the United States for cycling. It was the first cycling medal won by a woman in the Olympics and the first medal won by the United States since 1912. She is also one of only nine U.S. athletes who have competed in both the summer and winter Olympics-she finished seventh in the 1,500-meter speed skating event in 1972.
- In 1976, after winning three medals in speed skating at the Winter Olympics, Sheila Young of Michigan won both the United States and world sprint cycling titles.
- France's Jeannie Longo is widely known as being the best female cyclist in history and still active in cycling during 2007.
- Nancy Burghart Haviland was inducted into the U.S Bicycling Hall of Fame in 2007. During the 1960s, she won 8 out of 10 national championships.
- In the 2012 London Olympics, Colombian Mariana Pajon won gold in women's BMX cycling, with Sarah Walker of New Zealand taking the silver and Laura Smulders of the Netherlands the bronze.
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