'It would otherwise have been a catastrophic collapse' – UK time trialling saved by road bikes, says new report

The governing body for time trialling in the UK has spelled out in the most explicit terms yet just how important embracing road bikes has been for the sport.

Time trialling had been facing "catastrophic collapse" when the strategy was launched back in 2022, Cycling Time Trials (CTT) wrote in its newly released annual report.

The report detailed the continuing success of road bikes within UK time trialling, with 76% of newcomers to the sport opting to use their standard bike rather than buy a TT-specific lo-pro machine. That figure was even higher among women at 83.7%.

"I'm absolutely delighted with it," CTT chair Andrea Parish said of the success of the road bike strategy. "There's been a big team effort on it, and it's giving riders what they want."

The organisation rolled out its new road bike class in April 2023, which saw a default category for drop bar machines attached to every event. It made time trialling immediately more accessible and appealing to a wide range of riders. Now, by CTT's own reckoning, the idea saved the sport.

The report said: "Put simply, the Road Bike category has almost completely offset what would otherwise have been a catastrophic collapse in the sport."

Explained Parish: "Where we were in 2022 we were looking at a post-Covid world that was not good. If we hadn't done what we did with road bikes, we'd be looking at, you know, 20,000 rides, we'd have been so down. It was looking fairly grim."

The figures show, perhaps unsurprisingly, that younger riders are more likely to ride road bikes, and older age groups time trial bikes. For example, 59.3% of those aged 18-30 use road bikes, and only 28% of those in the 50-60 years bracket.

However, while road bikes continue to be an unqualified success story in UK time trialling, overall number of time trial rides continued to fall year on year, as did overall number of open events. There was also a lower number of clubs affiliating with CTT, with less money coming in as a result.

Open events are those that are open to all as opposed to club events which are broadly restricted to those within that club. The number of these had actually risen in 2025, Parish revealed, although those figures were not available at the time of writing.

There was work to be done, said Parish, who plans to take a 'ground-up' approach to addressing falling numbers.

"Where I would like to really push the growth is in club events," she told CW. "Because you can either enter club events and that's all you do. But that's also where people are 'found'. You think about Hayley [Simmonds]. She started off doing club events. People can graduate from that."

She added: "I would be very happy if the number of open events stabilised and we simply had more clubs who were interested in running club events, because for me, that's the entry point. That's where the real base is. I think if you can grow that, it strikes me that the rest might just follow."

The report also paid homage to off-road and gravel time trials, explaining that while they were already sanctioned by CTT, the organisation was currently finalising an off-road toolkit for clubs who wished to promote them.

The report said this would mean "every club can confidently stage them under the CTT banner. With gravel and off-road cycling booming nationally, this is a readymade, low-cost, high-appeal avenue for clubs to attract new members and riders who may never consider traditional road time trialling."

This year put time trialling in the UK on a firm footing, Parish said, laying the groundwork for community engagement and reconnecting with clubs – "the bells and whistles" – that she envisaged for 2026.