Mountain Bike Racing

Mountain bike racing has been recognized as an actual sport relatively recently, in the early 1990s. The Union Cycliste International had created new rules for this different type of cycling when it sanctioned the world championships in Colorado. The first race of this type took place in 1991 as a world cup series competition. It included a nine-race circuit that covered two continents, Europe and North America. A year later, the competition was extended to a ten races circuit but it had lost its European featured and it remained a trans-Atlantic series.

There are different disciplines within mountain bike racing and some of them include cross-country, downhill, super D, freeride, ford cross, marathon, enduro and dirt jumping. The cross-country version is usually held on a varied terrain circuit with a length of maximum 8 km. it is a massed-start race and in those designed for professional racers the circuit can get up to 50 km long. The downhill racing is a time trial competition in which riders start at intervals and are held in steep and downhill terrain. Because of the nature of the terrain, downhill mountain bike racing implies a higher speed than cross-country racing. The super D variation is a type of mountain bike racing in which the cross-country and downhill are combined. Most of the track is downhill but there are also short sections that are uphill. In these competitions, riders used cross-country bikes or trail bikes. Megavalanche is the most popular mountain bike racing of this type. Freeride is a competition of skill, and not so much of a race. The riders must prove skill in passing the different obstacles, cliffs, drops and ramps. Enduro racing is a relatively new discipline in mountain bike racing which implies different stages in which the winner is the cyclist who managed to accumulate the lowest combined time in the different timed sections.