The women's Olympic mountain bike race has been postponed until Saturday because of rain damage to the course, the UCI confirmed on Thursday.

The decision follows the postponement of the sem-final rounds of BMX competition earlier in the day.

The women's mountain bike race, held on a 4.5km loop to be raced for approximately 1 hour 40 minutes, was due to be held on Friday.

Workers scramble to clear rain off of the running track at Beijing's "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium.

Photo: Agence France Presse

It means that both the women's and men's Olympic races will be held on Saturday, with a scheduled start of 10:00 a.m. for women and 3:00 p.m. for the men.

After a meeting Thursday with organizers and informing all of the teams, UCI official Peter Van den Abeele said the race had to be postponed.

"The course has been damaged by the weather conditions,” Van den Abeele said. "It rained throughout the night and almost until 3:00 p.m. It's a very technical course and the safety issues involved were decisive for us in making this postponement."

Forecasts call for sunny weather on Friday.

Photo: Casey B. Gibson

The UCI official pointed to weather predictions for Friday and Saturday that call for sunny conditions, allowing the field to race in conditions similar to earlier this week when they trained on the 4.5km loop that is raced for a predicted two hours by the men and about one hour and 40 minutes by the women.

"It's probably the first time we've had to do this but the Games are only once every four years," added Ven den Abeele. “The race has to be held in the fairest conditions possible. We don't want it becoming a lottery."

Waiting for the rain to stop.

Photo: Casey B. Gibson

Heavy rain early in the day forced the postponement of Thursday's semi-finals in the BMX bicycle competition until Friday.

Action in the men's and women's events had been due to start at 11:00 a.m., but the bad weather saw this initially moved back to 3:00 p.m. As the downpour continued, however, a decision was taken to postpone BMX racing until Friday.