John Henry Lake of the United States won the nation's first cycling medal with his bronze.

Two of the three top sprinters in 1900 were French and competed: Ferdinand Vasserot and Albert Taillandier.

An American, John Henry Lake, however, had finished second in the world championships to Didier-Nauts and was the most significant non-French competitor in the field.

[1] Belgium, Bohemia, Italy, and the United States each made their debut in the men's sprint.

Unlike modern sprint events (which use a flying 200 metre time trial to cut down and seed the field, followed by one-on-one matches), the 1900 sprint used very large initial heats of up to eight cyclists each before smaller quarterfinals, semifinals, and final with three cyclists in each race.

For the first round, the top three cyclists in each heat advanced; in the quarterfinals and semifinals, only the fastest man moved on.

Antonio Restelli finished the first round with a 13.6 second time in the ninth heat.

Albert Taillandier dropped below that to 12.6 seconds in the next quarterfinal, a time that held through the rest of the 1900 Games.

Lake had defeated Vasserot previously in 1900, at the world championships where the two had placed second and third to Léon Didier-Nauts.