Why is the UCI launching a eMTB World Cup?

If you hang around bike circles often—or just read the PinkBike comment section occasionally—you’ve probably come to realize that discussion of e-bikes sounds a lot like discussion of American government funded health care: you’re either for it or against it. 

My thoughts on e-bikes tend to be neutral, vearing on the side of good for society, in general. To be frank, I don’t think about e-bikes that often. But I did have a couple thoughts when I saw the press release about the UCI launching an eMTB World Cup series. 

There will be five races on the 2020 E-Mountain Bike Cross-Country World Cup calendar in places like Monaco and Barcelona. The series will be organized in conjunction with the World E-Bike Series Management (WES), which ran a similar series in 2019. 

It’s not abnormal for the UCI to bring previously outside races under the purview. Starting last year, the UCI began a partnership with the Enduro World Series. In that case, part of the reasoning behind the partnership was anti-doping aide from the UCI and Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation. However, it’s unclear what the UCI can offer to the WES, aside from calling themselves a World Cup series. 

It seems that the UCI are pandering to a trend. I get it. E-bikes are extremely popular, and the UCI want to remain relevant in a changing cycling landscape. But without further details, it doesn’t seem like this is helping the sport of cycling. It looks like the UCI slapping their logo on a race series and saying, “Yay, we have an e-bike series now.” 

It is relevant to point out that the UCI does have an e-bike section in their mountain bike rule book. However, I did find it ironically funny that there are technically more listed regulations for alpine snow biking than e-biking (6 snow bike regulations versus 5 e-bike regulations). 

E-bike racing is fine, but the UCI should focus on the problems in traditional cycling before they venture into the e-bike world. 

For instance, the UCI is currently involved in multiple different quagmires between itself and World tour teams. One of the more troubling details is that the UCI has allocated one million euros for legal costs to fight Velon—a business owned for World Tour teams which owns the Hammer Series of road cycling races—to fight an antitrust complaint filed by Velon. The problem, which was originally surfaced to the broader cycling world via Jonathan Vaughters’ Twitter feed, is that the money will come from the World Tour emergency fund, which World Tour teams contribute cash to. 

Another recent issue, this time on the mountain bike side, surrounds medical staff preparedness at world championship and world cup level events. At last year’s Mountain Bike World Championships, it took medical staff five hours to transfer Brook Macdonald—who had fractured two vertebrae in a training crash—from the venue to the hospital. It’s clear from press coverage that the incident could have been handled differently, and Macdonald mentions in a recent podcast interview that the UCI made errors in their statement after the incident including the timeline of events and what day he had surgery. 

As a cycling fan and observer, I wish the UCI would be a bit more conservative in their decision making on whether to expand into new territories. Let’s make road, mountain bike, and cyclocross really good before focusing on motors. That is assuming that motors aren’t already a part of the equation (insert winky face here).