Cool E-Bike Race Ideas

Last week, this blog discussed the creation of an e-bike World Cup series, and pondered the question of why, exactly, is the UCI becoming involved with e-bike racing. While I was writing that piece, I came across a comment on Pinkbike about the format of e-bike races. 

Honestly, just making it an XC race with ebikes is a missed opportunity. I'd like to see an ebike race with technical climbing and enduro caliber descents. That fully maximizes the ebike capabilities, while also producing exciting racing. Oh well. 

While dealing with the Pinkbike comment section is risky business, I agree with this user. It looks like the e-bike World Cup will just be XCO style races on e-bikes instead of regular bikes. In addition, the Enduro World Series released details on their own EWS-E series format, which is basically an enduro race on e-bikes instead of regular bikes. 

The comment from Pinkbike user roma258 highlighted above inspired me to think about e-bike race formats that would actually be cool and interesting to watch. 

E-Marathon 

Instead of a standard 90-minute XCO style cross country race, e-bike races should be more in the 2+ hour range. This would highlight the “e” part of the e-bikes. Racers would have to strategically plan out how they would use the pedal assist feature on their bikes to ensure that they don’t run out of battery power too early. 

Here’s an example. Let’s say the course is a 50 kilometer loop featuring singletrack and dirt roads. The first 10 km is flat, the next 20 km features a big climb and descent, and the final 20 km is flat with rolling hills. Racers would likely opt to use pedal assist on the long climb, but they can’t use too much power if they don’t want to run out of battery before the 20 km run into the finish. Will racers opt to use a lower power level for a longer period of time or a higher power level for shorter bursts?  This would make the race much more strategically engaging for fans. 

E-Hillclimb 

The EWS-E series format alludes to 1 “very short, very technical” climbing stage in each race. This is interesting and goes in the right direction, but if the stage is short that means you can’t really win the race there, you can only lose it there. I’d like to see much more emphasis put on technical climbing. (Not necessarily in enduro races but in e-bike racing in general.) 

That’s where a hillclimb race would come in. The E-Hillclimb would be a standalone event (or, perhaps part of an omnium competition) using an individual time trial format. The climb would be long, in the 1-hour range, and feature extremely technical terrain. A course like this would not be one typically featured in a regular cross country race, due to the extremely technical terrain, such as climbing up trails that are typically descended. Thus, the “e” component of e-bikes is highlighted in giving riders a boost up the gnarly sections. 

These are a couple of e-bike race ideas that come to mind when thinking about races that would actually be fun and engaging from a fan’s perspective. In my view, e-bike races should take advantage of the pedal assist feature on these bikes, rather than just being a regular mtb race format with battery power added.