A new discipline, gravel, will join the UCI cycling calendar in 2022. From next year, cycling’s international governing body will organise – in collaboration with event organiser Golazo – a UCI Gravel World Series.
The new UCI Gravel World Series consists of events that enable athletes to qualify for the UCI Gravel World Championships.
UCI notes that the gravel discipline combines elements of road and mountain bike, and takes place mainly on unsealed roads (gravel, forest tracks, farm roads, cobbles, etc). Races in the UCI World Series will be mass participation events.
Continuing a focus on off-road cycling, from the 2022 season of the Mercedes-Benz UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, cross-country short track (XCC) will have its own overall ranking. This gives XCC a similar status to that which is already the case for cross-country Olympic (XCO) and downhill (DHI).
This means that a UCI World Cup winner for cross-country short track will be crowned at the end of the season in both the men’s and women’s competitions. At the same time, XCC will continue, as is the case today, to play a role in deciding the positions of the riders on the starting grid for the XCO events (the 24 highest-ranked riders in the first three rows).
Points gained in the XCC will also continue to count towards the UCI World Cup ranking for XCO.
Another new initiative, a test event for a cyclo-cross team relay, will take place during the 2022 edition of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships being held in Fayetteville, Arkansas (USA) on 29-30 January.
This test event will then be evaluated with a view to potentially integrating the CX team relay into the programme of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships in the future.
Finally, UCI notes that the development of snow bike continues, and the organisation is exploring new possibilities for organising a UCI Snow Bike World Cup and UCI Snow Bike World Championships for the 2022-2023 winter season. An analysis is currently underway, and its results will be presented to the UCI Management Committee in January 2022.
