Competitive road cycling is a professional sports discipline with trophies, records and big money at stake. Yet more and more often, people are riding road bikes simply for pleasure.

For most of us in Poland and the wider region, bicycle racing has been primarily associated with the Peace Race and a game that was quite popular with kids a while back. Each player had a set of bottle caps decorated with the flags of the countries starting in the race. Fierce battles would ensue in yards and playgrounds between the ‘cyclists’ of East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland. With flushed faces, adults would follow the television broadcasts of each subsequent stage. Yet, at the time, both children and adults could only dream of owning a real road bike.

The situation has radically changed today. The Peace Race and most of the countries participating in it are now long gone, the bottle cap game has become outdated, but on the other hand, more and more people are riding road bikes in Poland. In a study conducted two years ago, 11% of the 25,000 cyclists in the country declared that they indeed ride road bikes. And that trend is growing visibly. Reasons for this include the constant improvement of bicycle infrastructure in cities and better access to cycling equipment. Traffic regulations have also been changed to allow two bikes