In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) announces that it has changed the participation rule for the team relay test event taking place in Fayetteville, Arkansas (USA) on Friday 28 January, the day before the start of the official 2022 Walmart UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships (29-30 January).
Many national teams have arrived in Fayetteville for the 2022 Walmart UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships with reduced numbers due to athletes who were unable to travel due to illness or enforced quarantine.
To ensure that nations entered in Friday’s team relay test event can still field a team despite their restricted numbers, the UCI has reduced the number of riders per team from six to four. Each participating team in Fayetteville will line up two female riders and two male riders as follows:
1 Woman Junior or 1 Woman Under 23,
1 Woman Under 23 or 1 Woman Elite,
1 Man Junior or 1 Man Under 23,
1 Man Under 23 or 1 Man Elite.
Nations have also been offered the chance to enter two teams of four riders each.
Originally, each team was to line up six riders as follows: one Elite male and one Elite female, as well as two male and two female riders from the Under 23 and / or Junior categories.
Each rider will race over one lap of a 3km course before tagging in his or her teammate waiting in a transition zone. Friday’s test event will therefore logically be four laps instead of the originally planned six laps. Each nation can determine its own starting order.
Apart from the change in the number of team members, the overall concept remains the same and will provide an interesting and exciting foretaste of what could become a regular appearance. Indeed, the test event will be evaluated with a view to potentially integrating the team relay – in its six-rider format - into the programme of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships in the future. A similar and immensely popular relay for mountain bike cross-country Olympic (XCO) has been part of the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships since 1999.
The UCI’s flexibility concerning the participation rules will not have a significant impact on the ability to evaluate interest for the team relay format in cyclo-cross.
Between 5,500 and 6,000 spectators are expected at the Centennial Park venue in Fayetteville, Arkansas, for this cyclo-cross team relay test event.
The nations participating in the team relay test event in Fayetteville are: Belgium, Canada – A, Canada – B, Czech Republic, Italy, USA – A and USA – B.