In Portugal, clubs were responsible for organizing races, creating newspapers and propaganda, supporting competitors and planning sports buildings. They were an elite constituted by bourgeois characters and frequently represented by the royalty. As established by Portuguese sports historians, it was the clubs who pushed the cycling modality through the decades. In 1899, the União Velocipédica Portugesa was created, an association to which all official clubs until today, belong.
Although in Portugal, cycling as a leisure activity developed almost parallel to its evolvement as a sport, it was the transition from one to another which further pushed the realms of cycling. In its beginning, cycling as a leisure activity encouraged the sport- in terms of competition- out of the velodromes and into the streets and country landscapes, eventually leading many years later to sports such as mountain biking and its derivatives. Although in its beginning, cycle-tourism was mainly an activity for upper class members -both male and female-, it is highly practiced today by a wider public and throughout the country.
In the beginning, most of the cycling activity happened in improvised racing tracks, many of which were usually on clay and with insufficient conditions for competing. The lack of good paving for cycling races lead to the construction of diverse velodromes. The enthusiasm for bicycles in Porto was truly a phenomenon of popularity. On July 4, 1883, the country's first velodrome was inaugurated at Quinta de Salgueiros by the Velocipedista Section of the Clube de Caçadores.