RAINBOWS, NOT RAIN
Cycling gets serious next summer, the UCI is combining 13 World Championship disciplines into a two-week party in Scotland, with Glentress bagging the XCO racing
We’ve grown used to the Tweed Valley hosting some pretty sizeable events over the years, but in 2023 it’s going to get a whole lot bigger when the World Championships comes to town. For the first time, Glentress will host the biggest race in XC as part of the combined UCI Cycling World Championships, where the big idea is to bring together 13 Uci-accredited disciplines in one location: Scotland.
The 2023 Worlds will be fought out in multiple locations across the country in an 11-day long festival, with thousands of athletes battling for the rainbow jerseys in those two weeks of racing.
It means cycling has finally got its act together, and the combined programme will be one of world’s top 10 sporting events, organisers reckon, with a million spectators turning up to watch, and a billion watching it on TV.
“We know Glentress hasn’t had an event of this size and scale before,” Trudy Lindblade 2023 Worlds CEO told us. “But the work it’s done with the
EWS and the support from Scottish Borders Council and South of Scotland Enterprise are contributing to why we went to Glentress. And all the work that’s gone into that area for mountain biking, and the terrain itself, means we can do a really great technical course that athletes can be truly tested on.”
This is a sizeable move for Glentress, a location most of us probably think of as a trail centre, albeit an excellent one and part of the famous 7Stanes. It marks a pretty big step up in status. It’s also a big opportunity for mountain biking to grow – a billion viewers aren’t going to tune in for the XC race alone of course, but there’ll be many thousands who will get excited by our sport, seeing it for the first time. Remember London 2012? British Cycling reckoned 100,000 more people became regular road riders after watching those Olympic Games.
MIX IT UP
Scotland 2023 organisers are also hoping fans will physically visit to watch the sport they love, then head on to other events while they’re there. We quite like the idea of heading up for the
XC, Marathon and DH, and taking in the BMX and Trials in Glasgow, for example.
There’s a huge amount of work to do before racing can take place, but it won’t include an entirely new XC course, explains Bob Macfarlane, the man in charge of mountain biking at the 2023 Worlds.
“The idea is to use the existing stuff we have and some from a new trail, and add some features for the new course,” he says. “We want to leave a course behind that can be used for future events, XC races, like the British Nationals and the Scottish Nationals. We don’t want to spend money on a temporary build that gets flattened afterwards.”
An XCO course demands a big start straight, and a staging area for all the support staff that go along with this level of racing. Construction has already begun. The 2023 plans run handin-hand with the Forestry and Land Scotland’s Glentress Masterplan, as it’s known, to freshen up Glentress and make the site more accessible for riders, while also making it work for the Worlds. There will be a new skills area, and taster trails or mini loops of various grades to give riders a feel for the venue.
“At the moment you have the black route, the red and the blue, and a skills area at the top at the Buzzards car park, while the cafe is at the bottom,” Bob says. “It’s a spread-out site, a patchwork, and it’s not the best journey from the start, but the plan is to pull it all together to improve the visitor experience.”
The XCO course itself will be truly Scottish in the way it looks and feels, so riders can expect roots, roots and more roots, with a dash of rock and rain thrown in. It’ll be techie, Bob says, challenging for the world’s best riders but without being contrived and with nothing “plonked in or artificial-feeling,” he says. “There are a couple of features we’ve picked out already – an old wall we can use, so it feels part of the landscape and gets that showcase feel.”
GLENTRESS DOUBLE
It’s the landscape that really drew the XCO race to Glentress, because it allows space for the Marathon too. The two events go together because there’s so much crossover – both need a big start straight and event village, and both require the same technical officials, and often pull in the same competitors and team support staff. Where one goes, the other follows, and that ruled out Cathkin Braes near Glasgow, host to the Commonwealth Games in 2014, and the 2018 European Championships.