Willingen dropped from 2013 UCI World Cup
Just had a peek at the UCI 2013 calendar after a Tweety tip off and it looks like Willingen has been axed.
It’s official, Willingen, the track that if we’re honest the riders probably weren’t too fond of anyway due to it’s short BMX-y style has been dropped from the 2013 schedule.
The dates have been slightly jigged about too. Fort William remains on 8/9th of June but Val di Sole moves to the 15/16th of June and Vallnord is now 27th/28th July. The final three rounds remain the same.
Any rumours of a round elsewhere to replace it?
Pretty sure there won’t be a replacement for that round. So it’ll be 6 rds in 2013.
I love Mt Ste Anne and all, but it’s getting played out after so many years.
This is pretty laughable. A world cup that lasts a couple of months? Downhill is being sold short. Crap deal for sponsors, crap deal for us punters but awesome if you’re a paid pro I guess with that much off season. They’ve got it even easier than teachers!
What a poor schedule. 6 races, none of which are at new venues, and only 1 outside Europe is a very poor state of affairs for a “World Cup”. Would be great to see a return to Colorado, Brazil, or Japan at some point. I can only presume team budgets are being squeezed. Did Red Bull coverage this season not inject some more cash?!
You what! Only 6 rounds! it’s a joke! what a way to kill of the sport!!
Am I the only one tired of the “UCI is killing the sport” train?
What’s the alternative,can someone explain me?
This sport doesn’t make money like in the mid 90′s,and as it is never will again. It’s a small sport,and it’s not growing. It’s expensive to start with,dangerous,and it’s floating around between the likes of motocross,dh skiing and bmx.
I race DH too,and would very much love to see a proper world cup season.
Believe me, Nozes, you’re not the only one sick of the anti UCI rants. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Cheers
I’m sick of it too. UCI is not perfect but they don’t control the bids.
the UCI hardly put any money into it. that’s why alot of the top racers are wanting a independent race circuit. if the DH1 ever takes off the UCI DH circuit will be over. the future is racer will be more involed with the format. same with what happen with the 4x, UCI killed it off… riders got together and made it stronger!
The possible round in China won’t be happening then?
It might be an XC only round.
6 rounds is a joke , why not do 2-3 races in each country while they are there ?
3 in france , 3 in switzerland , also eastern europe nations have stunning tracks that are chair lift operated.
They could hold a whole season in just usa/canada if they wanted to , plenty of amazing tracks out there
And a lot of these places have more than one track too why not have 1-3 rounds in one location ?
Because the riders would at first get injured much more and then start riding more cautiously. 7-8 rounds/season makes sense.
the MX guys seem fine with 16 rounds and i doubt they have anyless injurys
It’s probably a lot easier logistically for the MX races, more money in their sport, all the events take place in the same country, they only have to travel from one city to the next (on highways, not little roads through the mountains) instead of all over the place. All they need is a flat piece of land too, not a hill with some form of uplift service.
We need more rounds to improve the sport. Its not like there short of tracks
Must be saving all there cash for the new enduro series
Apparently not! http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Breaking-news-2013-UCI-World-Enduro-Series-Cancelled.html
To the best of my knowledge since 1997 there have been 3 years when there were only 5 rounds (2 years when a race was cancelled I think), 4 years when there were 6, 3 years when there were 7 and 6 years when there were 8 (the maximum. The 8s were mainly in the late nineties/early noughties. Recently 6 or 7 is the norm unfortunately. At least Vallnord is back after last hosting a WC race in 2009; that’s a good track isn’t it? Also where Sam Hill had that mega crash off that blind lip…
Someday…I foresee a Professional league of some sort. UCI will become to DH what FIFA is to futbol. Also, let’s be honest bike companies aren’t making near the coin on MTB as road and other categories so their focus isn’t there to develop a separate league with a 10 race schedule.
Screw uci, aren’t they taking away the enduro world cups as well?
it never got introduced
Willengen getting axed – good.
Yet another round at Mt St Anne AND Fort William – bad.
6 rounds only – bad…UNLESS
A new league sponsored by Red Bull to go alongside UCI WC’s is implemented, whatever happened to the DH1 series? I personally wouldn’t care if it was UCI or not, just some rich assed enthusiast/entrepreneur FIX our sport! We have awesome Dirt.tv vids, lots of website articles up to date. We need to work this out, surely we can get something worked out??
I think DH1 was cancelled because freecaster could not get the sponsors they needed…
And yes if Willingen had not been cancelled, everyone would have complained about the track. And rightly so. I’ve ridden it on my 6″ bike without problems (although I admit, I did ride around the 2 big drops!)
Never mind that DH is exploding in NZ, where you have like, what, Blenki, Cole, Branigan, Bulldog, Wyn Masters, etc… Amazing bike trails, close to Japan and Oz for a race or two, (CAINS IS CALLING!!)
No s#!t! NZ would rock. And I’ve never even been there!
With what the riders put themselves through I feel like a new league/race schedule would have to have all contests with prize money equal that of Crankworx/Redbull Joyride. Redbull could be a title sponsor but the “league” would have to be owned by “someone else”. i know this is a long way off but a sport like DH expecting UCI to govern it and to run its highest level of competition is unrealistic. While surfing isn’t perfect we could learn a lesson from that sport. Ripcurl, Quicksilver, and Billabong basically make the WCT happen. So Redbull, TLD, Specialized, Raceface, Trek…lets see something. It will translate to more sales!
Probably more of a reflection on the dwindling and fragile global economy and the drive to sell more bikes that aren’t 26″?
Ladies and Gentlemen, this, is the thin end of the wedge.
Are we to sit and ride through this quagmire of debasing much more? I for one truly believe that next year will be the same or worse.
Where is Chris Ball & Will Longden in all of this? They’re our man on the ground trying to keep it real or have they rolled over for the pay cheque (not saying, just asking).
Red bull have sub-standard coverage (might be prettier but is the poor cousin of freecaster.tv), and now the series is cut short. Next the UCI will say that the overall support is too low and that they will cut the series.
Hi Craig,
I don’t know you although it appears you feel you know me. Let’s just start by clarifying a few points you’ve made. The most important one being that Will Longden doesn’t and never has worked for the UCI. It’s nice of you to slander a man who has done nothing but good for the sport in the UK but perhaps you should make sure you know what you are talking about and that the people you are publicly denouncing are the right people.
Secondly, if you think decisions like this are down to one (or two) people then you are sadly wrong. Does it suck that the series is down by a round? Of course it does. You’re not alone to think that. But to make things like this personal on a public forum is just a bit sad. Go and ride your bike and take a little time to do some research before you start typing next time. Just saying.
Chris that’s the second time this year you have posted a bit of a rant online (the first being after Rachel crossed the tapes). If someone calls you out that’s fine, respond with your own point of view and i’m sure you will get your points across. Getting overly aggressive and tossing words like slander about just makes you look like someone who needs to chill out a bit.
Cool Hand Luke – I think you need to read my post again. Surely I am not alone in thinking that if you feel strongly enough to post your opinions online, especially when relatively personal, you should make sure you at the very least are naming the correct names. In this instance, someone has felt the need to specifically mention a person who hasn’t, doesn’t and may never have any UCI involvement.
The ability we now have to spread our views to a wide audience at the tap of a button is powerful but if we allow ourselves to get so sloppy that we feel it’s ok to insinuate some pretty negative points against the wrong person, because we never took the time to make sure we were correct, then we are all in trouble in the long run. That’s not aggressive by any stretch of the imagination.
So just to clarify, mention me as much as you like in this thread, but Will Longden has done a great job in recent years managing the British Team and should never have been mentioned in the above post. That’s how rumours start and good reputations are wrongly tarnished.
Chris
I’ll take that on the chin and I apologise.
I thought that there was more than you engaged with it the whole thing and thought WL was. Again, half cocked I suppose.
It is disappointing that it feels like t is being eroded as a minority sport (as apposed to road). It just feels like it flows from the the whole 4X bit…
Gives other race series a chance at dates on the calender and to pull in some big names I suppose.
AWFUL 6 rounds, is there even any point. its not as if there’s a plentiful supply of of other downhill tracks around the globe and by globe; i mean out europe and north america.
this is a fucking joke, good work UCI working hard as usual to fuck things up
Why not just “Golden Goal” it from the off. 1 RACE…. WINNER TAKES ALL!!!
Come on guys,what are you,12 year old?
It’s about the MONEY,not the tracks or the teams or anything else!
How on earth could you hope that a internet tv could put up a world series? How many dh bikes do you think are sold compared to xc bikes,to make the brands invest in the sport?
If a outside sponsor comes to a race and sees the level of professionalism (yes I’m talking cardboard elbow pads here),quantity of spectators and general size of the sport,there is very little interest in investing. I believe most of the brands with big teams are even losing money with DH.
The problem lies in the fact that exposure is limited. 80% of my friends still don’t understand what the difference between DH and XC bikes are. All “extreme” (non-team rewarded outdoor) sports had their big break moments. Look at skateboarding…when I skated it was not cool at all, now very popular. Look at surfing, used to be MUCH less widespread as now. Once some sponsor sees how crazy some of the DH/FR stuff is they will start using the images more to sell their products. Once the younger generations are exposed more it will explode like MX. I think all of us underestimate how raw/young the sport is.
Sounds like some mighty wishful thinking to me. For an extreme sport DH isn’t “raw” or “young” at all anymore. As other people have pointed out it boomed in the late 90s, which was when it separated itself properly from XC in terms of bikes, style etc.
Now its just a question of tweaking the format to try and get some incremental gains, which doesn’t seem to be doing too well in spite of Red Bull. Kids these days seem to have moved onto bloody street dancing of all things!
On a tangent, as far as I remember skateboarding was more widespread and cool about a decade ago than it is now?
The main problem with DH that it can’t be filmed properly. I see many people watching very boring sports on the Olympic games. DH is much more interesting but as you all know you can only watch few seconds of 4 minutes run. The only thing that will push DH forward is much better camera coverage.
Yep, thats pretty much it. Showing 3-4 disjointed sections of a DH run isn’t even interesting to me as a fan, never mind someone who knows nothing about the sport. Here’s an idea, Delay the feed by 20 mins, Give all the riders chest/head/frame cams that they have to hand in at the end of a run to have the onboard footage spliced with the actual trackside cameras, thereby showing each riders whole run (or at least as much of it as possible since the gaps between the lesser riders are so small)