The first UCI SnowBike World Championship will be in 2024

The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) has just announced that the first SnowBike World Championships will be held on February 10-11, 2024 in Châtel, Haute-Savoie (France). One more discipline that the UCI adds to its rainbow jersey collection and with which it hopes to attract the attention of fans in the off-season of cycling.

UCI announces the first SnowBike World Championship

The Snow Bike modality and the two competition formats proposed by the UCI are clearly inspired by alpine skiing, will be held in the environment of a ski resort, and will be: Super-G and Dual Slalom.

The Super-G races will be held on a snowy course with a descent of between 350 and 650 meters of vertical drop. The course will be marked by gates spaced 20-25 meters apart through which the cyclists will have to pass, as in alpine skiing.

The Dual Slalom (comparable to the slalom in snowboarding and alpine skiing) will be a race composed of several heats in which two riders will compete together on two parallel slalom courses (downhill). Each run will have a duration of half a minute.

The UCI SnowBike World Championship will be raced on DH mountain bikes and riders licensed by a UCI affiliated National Federation may participate.

UCI President David Lappartient said: "The awarding of the first UCI Snow Bike World Championships to Châtel signifies a key moment in the structuring of the discipline at world level. At a time when ski resorts are increasingly keen to diversify their range of activities, snow bike presents them with a new opportunity. This winter sport is a new addition to the mountain bike specialties that have been growing strongly in the tourism sector for several years now, and are increasingly practised from spring to autumn."

The UCI will soon provide more information on the technical details of the competitions.