Catch 22 and a bunch of mooks!

I hope you weren’t too excited to try your hand at a UCI World Cup race based in North America. I mean I know they are the largest races and the most challenging courses but you would much rather race some smaller stuff with a field of 20 or 30 and win some grips, right? Well your wish has been granted seems as if the mooks at UCI and the mook-like race promoters here in the states have crafted such a unique situation for us Mountain Bike racers, which we all get to suffer. The new current UCI regulation states that all entrants to a World Cup race must possess 20 UCI points at time of registration, in order to race. For those of you who have already processed that last sentence, we are fucked! In the U.S. there are only a few select races to which one can gain UCI points, these are mostly Road, Cyclo-cross and Cross-Country. That’s right, no Downhill or 4X for us to qualify. So to decode: To race a World Cup you must have World Cup points, which are only given in Downhill and 4X at a World Cup event. Catch 22 to say the least.
If local promoters could get there shit together to have there races qualify for UCI points you would find a large number of people flocking across the country just to sign up and race. So to decode: They would make a lot more money giving the public what they wanted, the points.