Big Changes And Breaking News In World Cup DH Racing | Up To Speed

The 2025 world cup downhill season is set to be one of the most exciting we have seen. Ben attempts to simplify some of the rule changes and catches a scoop before the DH World Cup in Poland.

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Well, well, well. Look at you disappear for 6 months. No phone call, no text, no postcard. I was worried. I didn’t know what would happen to you. And now you expect me to get you up to speed for the 2025 downhill world cup season. Well, it’d be my pleasure. So, there is far too much to catch up on. So, I’ll try and probably fail to stay out of the weeds, then drag you kicking and screaming into the 2025 season. First things first, let me try and give a top down overview of what’s going on with the new changes that have been announced. Starting with new entry requirements for racers, because there was a flipping pooptorm of hot takes when this got announced. Most of the uproar was to do with the new rules making it harder for lower ranked or private riders to get into the races. I’ll get to that, but allow me to start with the big dogs, the teams. There are two tiers of teams. Tier one, that’s a lot of tease, is the UCI Mountain Bike World Series teams, and tier two is the UCI Mountain Bike teams. For 2025, there are 15 UCI Mountain Bike World Series teams based on the team’s ranking after they signed all their new riders for this season and total up all the riders team ranking points, plus five wild card teams that are selected according to some kind of vague criteria that boils down to how much benefit the race series would gain from having that team there. It’s all marketing at the end of the day. Looking at the list, we’ve gained one fully new team of AON Racing, which is led by Reese Wilson on board those belt driven gam bikes. But we’ve lost Dal Common Cell, Madison Sar, the Union, Continental GT, Common Cell, IC Studio, Canyon, Pirelli, Mukoff, Young Guns, Beyond Racing, Common Cell, Schwabby, and others either because of the current bike industry challenges or from teams shying away from the bidding war that was to come. And there was a bidding war. Why? Well, it used to be that you could buy the tier 2 mountain bike team status and secure entries for your entire team for the whole season. It used to be like a hundred teams with guaranteed full season entries. Now, the only teams that are guaranteed entries for all the events are the 15 series teams and five wild cards. So, if a team was to have World Cup racing security, they needed riders with ranking points. And that means top riders from those teams that shut down got hoovered up. And now we’ve ended up with some heavyhitting teams with more riders than ever. Does it suck that the old guaranteed series entry rule for the second tier teams is gone? Well, for up and cominging racers, it was the most reliable pathway into the World Cups, but it also allowed a lot of racers to get entries who probably shouldn’t have been racing at the highest world level. I’m looking at this guy. Took well advantage at that. So, those tier 2 mountain bike teams, how do they get an entry now? Well, each round, the organizer will award five wildcard team entries based on a slightly different selection of fair and also some slightly more vague criteria. For Poland, we’ve got Kenda, NS Bikes, YT Racing Development, Goodman Santa Cruz, High Country, and Rogue Racing. And some of the riders on those teams have podium potential. So, it’s good that the teams at least get the occasional chance to throw their full roster of riders into world events. But what will those podium contenders do for the other rounds? And here’s where it gets even more confusing. The tier 2 mountain bike teams don’t qualify to race for a full series, but the individual riders on the team might. That’s because riders can also gain entries as individuals by placing in the top 50 junior or top 100 elite in the UCI rankings. And that’s calculated on UCI points when at UCI events. Are you following me? It used to be that anyone with at least 40 UCI points could enter a World Cup. Uh currently, just in the elite men, there are 413 people with more than 40 points. And I know they won’t all enter the same event at the same time, but I can see why switching to a ranking threshold rather than an arbitrary number of points makes sense. Let’s apply the new team and individual rules to Poland wildcard team high country. The full team can race in Poland as they’ve been awarded an event team wild card. But if they hadn’t, Bella and Malik could still race as they are in the top 100 juniors in the UCI ranking. But poor Zach, he would uh he’d be on trackside duty. Finally, an individual rider can win a national championships, continental championships, or get a top five, a continental series round to gain entry for the World Cups. And failing that, riders can also apply to their home country’s national cycling federation for one of the 12 jerseys they award per round for riders they feel deserve to race at the World Cups. So, it is more difficult to get into the World Cups and so much more confusing. So, why would they do this? Because there’s too many racers at the World Cups. The cues for uplifts are sometimes massive. The amount of practice time isn’t enough and the venues can barely accommodate all the teams. They need to cut the numbers from somewhere. Should they do at the top off? Of course not. Trim at the bottom, but leave some paths for the stars on their way to the top. Semi-finals are gone. Yes, I don’t think there’s going to be anyone that’s sad to see this idea shelled. The goal was to try and refine down the 60 men and 15 women who qualified into a smaller, neater, more digestible package of 30 men and 10 women that was easier to broadcast and be consumed by a wider audience. But it ended up being an unbroadcast struggle for racers that didn’t count for much and it didn’t even add a lot to the event. So now 20 elite men and 10 elite women will progress to the final from qualifying. Then everyone else heads back up the hill again to fight it out in the last chance qualif. No, sorry. Q2. It’s called Q2. For the last What are you laughing for? You don’t laugh. Sorry. I thought you made I thought it was a mistake that you were making and that you made it again. I thought what an idiot. No, that’s the script. Sorry. That’s good writing. I was totally freaking y up the hill again to fight it out in the last chance quot. No, it’s Q2. It’s called Q2 for the last 10 men’s and five women’s spots in the final. And there’s no protected riders. Let’s go. It used to be that about 10 men and five women racers held protected status based on their past results, which allowed them to have a mechanical or a crash in qualifying or semi-finals, yet still progressed to the finals. This was to keep consistency in the finals for the fans and allow them to see their favorite racers in a sport that is notoriously variable. Many saw this as incredibly unfair to the riders without this status who may otherwise have beaten the protected riders in the overall had their competitor not been given a free pass to the finals. It’s a slightly leveler playing field now with two chances for the top riders to get into the final. And I cannot wait to see the big dogs sweating their way through a last chance qualifier after a puncturing qualifying or some hero from Latvia sending a rundown and just squeaking into that final slot. There will be stories. And talking of finals, 15 women in the final instead of 10. Let’s go. I know the math doesn’t balance out on that, but you don’t encourage participation by providing less opportunity. It’s a good decision. Talking of racers, I think this might be one of the first opening rounds in a while where we are getting the vast majority of top racers actually competing and not sidelineing with injury. Don’t listen to that guy cuz he’s wrong. It turns out a lot can happen in 3 days. I’m out here in Poland and we’ve heard that Burner Care and his teammate Ryan Griffith both had really horrendous crashes and they won’t be racing this weekend. Also, we were just cutting about the pits, which is uh over behind me somewhere, and we spotted Casper Woolly with a cast on his hand. He has had a really annoying crash, he said, and broken a finger. He won’t be racing this weekend, and he was very sad about it. Hope all of them get better soon. And uh there’s probably someone else I missed. So, I’m going to let you know in the comments. Yeah, back back to the video. Back to the guy from a while ago. I mean, we are missing Eris Van Luven as she recovers from that hardline slam. Brunie, Verier, Dunn, uh, especially Dakota Norton are recently recovered from offseason injuries. So, we’ll see how that shakes out. But, man, healthy Jackson Goldston versus Amry Pieron. Yes, please. And will the luck finally land with Lucky Stevens McNab on his new track bike? Oh, talking of new bikes, Marine Cabaroo, Tanny Seagra, Phoebe Gail, Anna Newark, Monica Rasnik, Millie Yonet, Camille Balanch, they’re all on brand new bikes trying to dethrone Valentina Hull on her YT and Max Alon versus Ace of Hermit battling in the juniors again. How are they still in Junior? Heather Wilson, Elelliana Hulls defending against the onslaught of new rapid junior girls. Will someone change the industry and win on a bike driven by a gearbox and a belt? This is going to be a wild downhill season. So, you better hop on over to Pink Bikes Fantasy League, sign up, pick out your team, see if you can beat me. You probably will. And I highly recommend you check out the entry list when it’s released, as there will be riders in the league that aren’t racing the first round. Also stay tuned to our track side content so you can adjust your team right up until quality day. And we’re running a leaner production team this year due to the longer season and I’m going to be a bit more hands-on with the vids and trying to get track side a little bit more. So tell me what you want to see and I’ll make it happen and then say it was my idea. Sweet. Bye. Cut you. We done it. Cut. Can you cut? Oh, he sniffles. Cut. I don’t know what’s real or what’s not anymore.