What happened

At Spain's Elite-Sub23 and Paralympic Track Cycling Championship, held from 24 to 26 July 2026 at the Velódromo Luis Puig in Valencia, one event asked para-cyclists and non-disabled cyclists to race as a single team rather than in separate categories. The Team Sprint Inclusivo, contested on the afternoon of Saturday 25 July, drew five mixed formations. Comunidad Valenciana won, fielding Ricardo Ten, Alejandro Martínez and Isabel Ferreres, ahead of Navarra (Eduardo Santas, Anai Jiménez, Goretti Sesma) and Catalonia (Biel Pérez, Axel Moreno, Helena Casas). Ten, who races in the MC1 class, also won all four individual para events on the programme that weekend: the 200 metres and the elimination race on the Saturday, the kilometre and the scratch on the Sunday, per Ciclo21. The event carried a promotional, not official, status in its first edition, meaning a podium and a ceremonial recognition were awarded but no Spanish champion's title was at stake.

What a Team Sprint Inclusivo actually is

The format, organised by the Real Federación Española de Ciclismo (RFEC), let teams register under one of two pairing formulas. In the first, one male para-cyclist classified MC4 or MC5 rode alongside two elite or Sub-23 female cyclists. In the second, one para-cyclist from a wider set of classes (MC1 to MC3, or WC1 to WC5) rode alongside one elite or Sub-23 female cyclist and one elite or Sub-23 male cyclist. The MC and WC labels are UCI para-cycling sport classes carrying a gender prefix: C1 to C5 are the classes for riders who compete on a standard bicycle, ordered by degree of impairment with C1 the most impaired, while M and W denote the men's and women's fields. Entry was open to autonomous federations or teams, with a maximum of one trio per formula, and five teams took the start line.

The distinction between promotional and official status matters here. A promotional event can carry a podium and public recognition without being counted as a Spanish Championship title, which is the formal, federation-sanctioned competition that determines national champions in an event category. RFEC's own materials describe the aim as "transferring inclusion not only to the event, but to the competition itself," and frame the format as sending "a clear message about the value of sport as a tool for integration, coexistence and progress" (translated from the Spanish). That is documented language from the federation's published event materials, not a quote attributed to a named spokesperson.

Why RFEC joined Fundación Sanitas's Inclusive Sport Alliance

The Comité Paralímpico Español's own announcement of the Team Sprint Inclusivo describes the event as a concrete action linked to the commitment RFEC made when it joined the Alianza por el Deporte Inclusivo (Alliance for Inclusive Sport), a strategic alliance that Fundación Sanitas, the foundation arm of the Spanish health group Sanitas, created in 2010 alongside the Consejo Superior de Deportes, the Spanish Olympic Committee, the Comité Paralímpico Español, the Community of Madrid, Madrid City Council and Fundación ONCE, among others. Its membership today is organised into promoting partners, collaborating partners and a network of federations for inclusion covering more than fifteen sports, among them athletics, swimming, badminton, judo, rugby, triathlon, taekwondo, karate, archery, fencing, hockey, handball and modern pentathlon. Cycling is among the newest additions.

On the timing: the joint RFEC and Fundación Sanitas announcement was published on Sanitas's corporate site on 2 February 2026 and carried by independent insurance-trade coverage dated 28 January and 2 February 2026, which places the adhesion in early 2026, not in 2025. Yolanda Erburu, director general of Fundación Sanitas, described the alliance's purpose at the time of that announcement: "The true value of this alliance lies in its capacity to transform the way sport is conceived, so as to remove barriers and generate real opportunities" (translated from the Spanish). That statement addresses the alliance broadly; it was not made about the Team Sprint Inclusivo specifically, since the cycling event came several months later.

The RFEC itself has reason to lean into an inclusion initiative with institutional weight behind it. Founded on 15 November 1895 as the Unión Velocipédica Española, it is the oldest sports federation currently active in Spain; it became the Federación Española de Ciclismo in 1956 and took the "Real" designation in 1991. The Comité Paralímpico Español (CPE), which co-ran the Valencia championship's Paralympic strand, has its own separate institutional history: founded on 6 September 1995, recognised through a 1998 amendment to Spain's Sports Law as having the same nature and functions as the Spanish Olympic Committee and declared an entity of public utility, and today constituted under Sports Law 39/2022. It brings together 17 Paralympic federations and two non-Paralympic federations with high-performance disability programmes, organises Spain's participation in the Paralympic Games and runs the ADOP athlete support plan.

Is this part of a broader pattern in European sport?

The reporting reviewed for this article found one comparable structural step in a different European sport within the last twelve months: European Aquatics announced on 28 November 2025 that its 2026 Masters Championships, scheduled to take place from 19 to 30 August 2026 in Šamorín and Bratislava in Slovakia and in Graz in Austria, will for the first time be open to masters athletes with visual, hearing, physical and intellectual impairments. The mechanism differs. European Aquatics is opening participation categories within an existing championship, while the Team Sprint Inclusivo puts a para-cyclist and non-disabled athletes on the same competitive team, racing for one combined result. The public sources reviewed for this article did not identify another national or European championship announcement in the last twelve months trialling that specific mixed-team pairing structure, so this reads as one distinctive case rather than a trend, and it is presented that way here.

What remains open

The Team Sprint Inclusivo's own framing settles what it is not: not yet an official Spanish Championship event, run instead with promotional status and a ceremonial recognition rather than a title. What it does not settle is what comes next. Neither the RFEC's own materials nor the corroborating cycling trade press covering the Valencia weekend commit publicly to a second edition, an expanded field beyond five teams, or a path to official championship status. This review did not identify cycling federations elsewhere in Europe adopting the same mixed-team format, so whether Spain's approach travels beyond its own championship is also unresolved. The honest reading is that this is a first edition, promotional by design, with its continuation dependent on decisions the RFEC has not yet made public.

Sources

  • Comité Paralímpico Español (paralimpicos.es), "El Campeonato de España de Pista Élite-Sub23 y Paralímpico contará con una prueba de Team Sprint Inclusivo" (24 July 2026): https://www.paralimpicos.es/noticias/el-campeonato-de-espana-de-pista-elite-sub23-y-paralimpico-contara-con-una-prueba-de-team
  • Real Federación Española de Ciclismo, "El Campeonato de España de Pista Élite-Sub23 y Paralímpico disfrutará de una prueba de Team Sprint Inclusivo": https://rfec.com/index.php/es/smartweb/seccion/noticia/rfec/home/62950-El-Campeonato-de-Espana-de-Pista-elite-Sub23-y-Paralimpico-disfrutara-de-una-prueba-de-Team-Sprint-Inclusivo
  • Federació Ciclista Comunitat Valenciana (fccv.es), "Valencia acogerá el Campeonato de España de Pista Élite-Sub23 y Ciclismo Paralímpico": https://fccv.es/index.php/es/smartweb/seccion/noticia/valenciana/pista/62952-Valencia-acogera-el-Campeonato-de-Espana-de-Pista-elite-Sub23-y-Ciclismo-Paralimpico-
  • Track Piste, "El Team Sprint Inclusivo, remate de lujo del Nacional de paraciclismo" (July 2026): https://www.trackpiste.com/2026/07/el-team-sprint-inclusivo-remate-de-lujo.html
  • Track Piste, "Información del 'team sprint inclusivo' de los Campeonatos de España" (July 2026): https://www.trackpiste.com/2026/07/informacion-del-team-sprint-inclusivo.html
  • Ciclo21, "Campeonato España pista: Team Sprint Inclusivo": https://www.ciclo21.com/campeonato-espana-pista-2026-team-sprint-inclusivo/
  • Ciclo21, "Nacional pista paraciclismo: Ten, Santas y Bermejo al copo": https://www.ciclo21.com/campeonato-espana-pista-paraciclismo-2026/
  • Sanitas corporate site, "La Real Federación Española de Ciclismo se une a la Alianza por el Deporte Inclusivo de Fundación Sanitas" (2 February 2026): https://corporativo.sanitas.es/la-real-federacion-espanola-de-ciclismo-se-une-a-la-alianza-por-el-deporte-inclusivo-de-fundacion-sanitas
  • Fundación Sanitas, "Alianza estratégica y manifiesto": https://corporativo.sanitas.es/fundacion-sanitas/deporte-inclusivo/alianza-estrategica-y-manifiesto/
  • SegurosNews, "Fundación Sanitas incorpora a la Federación Española de Ciclismo a la Alianza por el Deporte Inclusivo" (2 February 2026): https://segurosnews.com/ultimas-noticias/fundacion-sanitas-incorpora-a-la-federacion-espanola-de-ciclismo-a-la-alianza-por-el-deporte-inclusivo
  • Community of Insurance, "La Real Federación Española de Ciclismo se une a la Alianza por el Deporte Inclusivo de Fundación Sanitas" (28 January 2026): https://communityofinsurance.com/2026/01/28/la-real-federacion-espanola-de-ciclismo-se-une-a-la-alianza-por-el-deporte-inclusivo-de-fundacion-sanitas/
  • European Aquatics, "European Aquatics Masters Championships 2026 will include Water Polo and be open to athletes with disabilities for first time ever" (28 November 2025): https://europeanaquatics.org/european-aquatics-masters-championships-2026-will-include-water-polo-and-be-open-to-athletes-with-disabilities-for-first-time-ever/
  • Comité Paralímpico Español, "Qué es el CPE": https://www.paralimpicos.es/cpe
  • Real Federación Española de Ciclismo, "La Real Federación Española de Ciclismo celebra su 125 aniversario": https://rfec.com/es/smartweb/seccion/noticia/rfec/home/43465-La-Real-Federacion-Espanola-de-Ciclismo-celebra-su-125-aniversario