With the confirmation of a final round in China, the 2016 UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup sees its number of stopovers increase to five. The overall winners of this inaugural series will be crowned in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan province in Southwest China.
Round one of the 2016 UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup took place in Montpellier, France, at the beginning of the month. The series will now move to Croatia (July), to the USA and Canada (September) before heading to China in October.
FISE/Hurricane have organised this series of BMX Freestyle Park competitions since 2014. This year, the series comes under the UCI umbrella, as the UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup, with the season’s best receiving the official UCI World Cup title at the last round.
The competition is open to all Pro Park riders worldwide. The qualifier on the first day of each round sees the 19 best riders selected to meet up with the top 5 riders in the series standings in the following day’s semi-final. Of the 24 semi-finalists, 12 qualify for the final on the last day of competition.
In the final, each rider gets two runs, with both runs counting towards a final score. After the two runs, every finalist gets three chances to pull one last trick. In a separate competition, the experienced judges decide who pulled the Best Trick of the day.
The UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup is drawing attention from all corners of the world, showing the sport is attractive not only to the riders but also to the general public. With a platform on three different continents and considerable media attention, this exciting young discipline will continue to grow.