February 20/14 9:41 am - UCI Makes Schedule Changes to MTB World Cup

Posted by Editor on 02/20/14
 

The UCI has made some changes to the schedule of events within individual rounds of the World Cup.  At events where both a Cross-country and Downhill take place the order of the events will be reversed, with the Downhill Final now taking place on Saturday and Cross-country Final on Sunday.  This is actually a return to the original format.  The events affected are Pietermaritzburg, South Africa; Cairns, Australia; Mont Ste Anne, Quebec; Windham, USA; and Méribel, France.

"Traditionally Downhill was always on the Saturday and Cross Country on the Sunday," said the UCI MTB Sports Coordinator, Simon Burney. "It only changed a few years ago."

"This year we had a couple of organisers who asked about the option to switch it back, particularly Mont-Sainte-Anne in Canada who have the Commonwealth Games just three days before their event so they wanted to give the riders travelling from Scotland an extra day to get there, recover from travel, and train on the course."

"Also for the DHI riders, when they raced on Sunday, Saturday was a kind of wasted day for them, with just a short training period. This gives them a shorter overall schedule without affecting their training or competition," Burney added.

Burney also said the UCI was striving to get consistency in their event formats across all their World Cup events.

"Some venues and organisers put a greater emphasis on one discipline over another, and get a larger crowd for that discipline. The only request from television is to have consistency throughout the season, both on the days of the finals of the televised events, and as close as possible the same time of day, throughout the season."

"It will be interesting to see viewing figures and get feedback from each event with the changed schedule, and we will take that into consideration when looking at the schedules moving forward," he added.