The aim of this study was to document the athletic profiles of adolescent and young adult high performance cycling athletes and to investigate to what extent different cycling disciplines can be discriminated from each other based on a generic test battery. A total of 243 adolescent (12.0- 15.99 y) and 63 young adult (>=16 y) male cyclists from road cycling, track cycling, cyclo-cross, and mountain bike (MTB) participated in the study. All participants performed four anthropometric, five physical, three motor coordination, and two cycling-specific tests. Using discriminant analyses, the young adult athletes could be correctly classified to their discipline for 80.7%. Track cyclists outperformed the other disciplines in explosive and coordinative skills while for cyclo-cross, and particularly MTB, the performance on the shuttle bike test seemed to be a distinctive variable. Road cyclists however, showed a significant overlap in performance characteristics with the other disciplines. In spite of the less pronounced discriminative character in the adolescent cycling population (51.0%), the discriminative characteristics are in line with the results of the young adults. This study allows to orient cyclists towards their best-fitted discipline in young adulthood. The relevance of these findings for coaches, experts and federations with respect to early/late specialization, and talent orientation are discussed.
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