Cyclocross racing could also be within the low season, however a sequence of adjustments for the 2024-2025 season have already stirred up some mud. On March 1, the UCI plans to implement “protected occasion” standing for a choose group of World Cup cyclocross occasions and appears to tighten “obligations” for highly-ranked riders to take part.
Athlete participation, or lack thereof, from final season, was a driving power for the rule adjustments, which had been reviewed throughout a UCI Management Committee assembly on February 2-4 throughout the Cyclocross World Championships in Prague.
The UCI mentioned the evaluation of athlete participation at World Cup races started final November, “with the intention of guaranteeing balanced athlete participation within the totally different classes of cyclo-cross occasions”.
For ‘balanced participation”, a brand new rule states that riders within the prime 20 of the lads’s and girls’s elite rankings will now “now not be capable to participate in nationwide occasions”, in response to the UCI announcement.
In order to attraction to these riders, the UCI said that each one World Cup occasions should reserve the primary two rows in elite races for the top-ranked athletes within the sequence.
For groups, a brand new rule stipulated that the 2 lessons of cyclocross registered groups had been obligated to ship a sure variety of riders to World Cup occasions, with UCI Professional Cyclocross groups required to ship at the least three riders throughout the lads’s and girls’s elite classes in all rounds of the World Cup.
For the smaller designation of squads – UCI Cyclocross groups – they’re obliged to ship at the least one rider in both class to a minimal of 5 rounds of the sequence.
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Current Cyclocross Pro Teams embody the Baloise Trek Lions, Deschacht-Hens-Maes and Pauwels Sauzen-Bingoal. The penalty for not assembly the requirement for riders would be the forfeiture of their top-level licence.
A swirl of controversy started final season when Thibau Nys (Baloise Trek Lions), positioned third within the World Cup standings on the time, opted to compete within the Superprestige race in Niel, Belgium on a Saturday slightly than the World Cup spherical in Dendermonde, Netherlands on Sunday.
UCI Chairman David Lappartient harshly criticised the younger rider’s determination to deal with his personal programme, saying riders ought to “play the sport”.
Lappartient additionally lashed out that if a national-level race was a desire over a World Cup for riders, then these people will not be allowed to start out different World Cup races “and due to this fact received’t experience the World Championships”.
Other riders and crew leaders chimed in concerning the hectic cyclocross calendar, with 14 or 15 World Cup occasions throughout Europe and North America previously three seasons, slightly than eight or 9 occasions from the pre-COVID years.
Other races on the calendar are a part of the Superprestige, X2O Trofee and Exact Cross sequence. Riders now look to restrict intensive journey and add relaxation durations within the build-up to the World Championships.
“In the previous, everybody might take part in each race. But now the calendar is so full that you just all the time must disappoint some organizations. This time that is a Superprestige, however within the coming weeks, the riders will doubtless skip one other World Cup,” mentioned Baloise Trek Lions crew supervisor Sven Nys to In de Leiderstrui.
On the organisers’ aspect for 2024-2025, the UCI will introduce “protected occasion” standing for as much as half of the races. This was to remove scheduling conflicts for riders, harkening again to the Nys state of affairs the place an athlete stayed nearer to residence and elected to not journey for a World Cup contest.
“This standing will probably be granted to a most of fifty% of UCI World Cup occasions and solely when the occasion is of explicit significance for the worldwide improvement of cyclo-cross,” learn the assertion from the governing physique.
“The granting of this standing will allow the UCI to refuse registration on the UCI International Calendar of a race that needs to happen the day earlier than or on the day of a ‘protected occasion’.
“The introduction of this particular standing is meant to advertise the internationalisation of cyclo-cross and to defend the prevalence of sporting curiosity in terms of participation in cyclo-cross occasions. It additionally helps the solidarity mechanisms developed because of the UCI World Cup, the intention of which is to extend the variety of nations participating in cyclo-cross occasions.”
A calendar for the 2024 UCI Cyclocross World Cup competitors is but to be introduced.