A more niche sport having its championships soon is mountain biking. A fantastic spectator sport, the BUCS downhill mountain bike championships essentially involve university students throwing themselves down a course as fast as they can, with the fastest finisher taking home the gold medal. Simple, right?
When and Where?
The BUCS downhill mountain bike championships are taking place on the 25th May in Abercanaid, Wales. The course will be open for practice from 9:30-12:30, a crucial time period in which the riders will get to grips with the course. Qualifying runs will then take place, followed by the championship runs after them.
Videos of the trails can be found on the BUCS website, and the trails they will be using are: Dai Hard, Coal not Dole and Zut Alors. Dai Hard falls under the “tech trails” category on the bike park Wales website, meaning that riders will have to keep their wits about them throughout the 0.4km course. Coal Not Dole is also 0.4km and a “tech trail,” making it reasonably similar to the Dai Hard course. Zut Alors is slightly shorter at 0.3km, and falls under the ‘“blend trails” category, offering a slightly different challenge to the other two courses
As with the road racing championships, the BUCS downhill mountain bike championships offer universities unlimited entries into the event. This is only limited by the capacity at the event itself as set by BUCS, but it will be great to see as many riders as possible battling it out in Abercanaid.
There will be four competitions during the day. There will be both a men’s and women’s competition, where the fastest riders will come out on top in the championship races. In addition to the individual competitions, there are also men’s and women’s overall team competitions. The individual racers will be automatically entered into the team competitions. Essentially, these team competitions are decided by the fastest cumulative three riders from each institution on the championship runs. This means that both individual performances and overall team depth are both important in order to come out with maximal BUCS points.