The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) is pleased to unveil today the UCI International Track Cycling Calendar for the 2018-2019 season. The calendar includes the six rounds of the 2018-2019 Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup, which have been awarded to the following cities:
Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France, will host the opening round of the 2018-2019 Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup. The velodrome houses headquarters of the Fédération Française de Cyclisme and national training centre for both track cycling, and BMX with its nearby track. Located in the western outskirts of Paris, near Versailles, the arena welcomed the UCI Track Cycling World Championships the same year as its inauguration, in 2015. The “SQY” venue is part of the World Cup series for the first time.
One week after the opening round in France, the 2018-2019 Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup continues in Milton, on the outskirts of Toronto, Canada. The Mattamy National Cycling Centre in the province of Ontario is the Canadian Cycling Association’s training centre. Built to welcome the 2015 Pan American Games, the velodrome in Milton hosts the World Cup series for the second year in a row, as part of a series of other events planned for the coming years.
After a one-month hiatus, the 2018-2019 Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup lands in the Velodrom arena of Berlin, Germany. Built by France’s acclaimed architect Dominique Perrault, the multipurpose arena is famous for its roof construction: with a diameter of 142 metres, it is Europe's largest steel roof. The velodrome hosted the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in 1999. The third round of the World Cup will serve as a rehearsal of the 2020 UCI Track Cycling World Championships presented by Tissot, to be held at Berlin’s Velodrom.
Less than two weeks after Berlin, the 2018-2019 Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup will move to London, Great Britain. Since its inauguration in 2012, the velodrome of the London 2012 Olympic Games has welcomed the series three times, as well as the UCI World Championships for the discipline in 2016. Known as Lee Valley VeloPark, the venue provided the stage for Bradley Wiggins’ successful UCI Hour Record attempt on 7 June 2015. The British rider set a new world mark of 54.526 km.
For the first round of 2019, the 2018-2019 Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup resumes in January in Oceania. It is the second time, after 2015, that the international series stops at the Avantidrome of Cambridge, a New Zealand town some 150km south of the North island’s largest city, Auckland. Built in 2014, the Avantidrome velodrome is linked to nearby BMX, road and mountain biking facilities, making Cambridge New Zealand’s official home of cycling and centre of excellence.
The 2018-2019 Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup concludes at the end of January in Hong Kong. It will be the second World Cup event to be held in the velodrome since it was built in 2013. The city’s velodrome also welcomed the UCI World Championships in 2017, the second time Asia organised the discipline’s leading annual event after Maebashi, Japan, in 1990.
The 2018-2019 Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup will be part of the qualification campaign towards the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
The 2018-2019 UCI International Track Cycling Calendar also includes the 2018 UCI Junior Track Cycling World Championships which will take place from August 15 to 19 in Aigle (Switzerland), at the UCI World Cycling Centre, which also houses the UCI headquarters. The 2019 UCI Track Cycling World Championships presented by Tissot will be held in Pruszkow (Poland) from February 27 to March 3.
The full 2018-2019 UCI International Track Cycling Calendar can be found here.