svenmartin

There is a massive issue that no one has mentioned. There are a decreasing amount of UCI sanctioned races offering points on the calendar. Many countries National rounds don’t even offer points or if they do, only a few points are on offer. The catch 22 is that WC riders that don’t “need” the points are often the only ones that snatch up these points. Even racing World Cups, you would have to have at least four top fifty results in a season to earn at least another 40 points for the following season. At class 1 events like the recent IXS cup, UCI points are only awarded up to 15th position. (you would need at least 4 top ten placings in an IXS cup series to race World Cups the following year. Not an easy task considering the amount of top World Cup riders attending) Now I have nothing against raising the bar and points needed for World Cup racing IF and this is a big IF there is a clear path regionally, nationally and Continentally of races and series’ offering Hors Classe, class one and class two points, that way there will still be opportunity for new riders to enter the talent pool each year. Ironically the UCI now does offer World Cup DH qualifying points to selected sanctioned snow bike races and enduro events ?!?!?! Which makes no sense as they are completely different disciplines in my eyes. World Cups will continue to see reduced fields (which is what UCI and Red Bull want) but in time this will be detrimental to the future lifeblood of the sport while disciplines like Enduro will continue to grow.

I dont see anything wrong with raising over $2500 from the riders in raffle at the race and then handing it over to Fraser Brown, a representative of the Marlborough MTB club, who maintain the trails the race passed through.