2011 UCI BMX World Championships
If BMX is your sport, and you don't know that the 2011 UCI Worlds are going on this weekend in Copenhagen, you must be living under a rock. All of the Challenge classes have gone, new World Champs have been crowned and today the Elites and Juniors hit the track with the Time Trials and the Super TT Finals. This is the first time that they have ran Time Trials as a Medaled event. And lets say that it caused some in difference and some confusion.
In Junior Women, Dani qualified 6th in Time Trials with a 41.227 and went on to the Super Finals. In Superfinals Dani went on to take a 6th with a 41.016, getting faster with her second lap.
In Junior Men, Nate quailified 36th with a 37.261, they only took the top 16 to Superfinals, but he gets to race the Worlds tomorrow.
In Elite Women, Amanda Carr qualified 12th in Time Trials with a 39.913, and then went on to race the SuperFinals and finished 16th with a 40.321
Then up come the Elite Men, Bubba started off with a great run, over shot one jump and missed a little bit of backside, he was sitting in the 10th spot for a while but was eventually bumped down to 69th, with a 35.645. So according to the UCI Rulebook, Bubba would not of made the Superfinals, but should of qualified to be in the top 128 to race the Worlds tomorrow. But due to someone deciding they were only going to take the top 64, Bubba's weekend is over before it begun. And this time not due to injury, but to a ruling.
If you click the text you can download the whole rule book from the UCI website. Now we are not mentioning this just because Bubba missed the cut, but there were a lot of other riders, ( 76 Elite Men Specifically ) Donny Robinson, Mikey Day, Tyler Faoro, etc.... that all made the trip and got to take 1 lap on the track. No more second go around on the time trials to try to improve your score, and most importantly the rules say 128 riders go on to race the worlds if 128 or more riders sign up. Now if it were 64 - 128 riders the rule states that they only take the top 64, but there were 138 riders signed up and 129 that got a score.
I am not trying to sour a great race and great finishes so far by all of our riders and BMXers from around the world, but there have to be more than a few people bummed that they are not going to get to race the Worlds because someone at the UCI decided that a rule published in their rule book is no longer valid. These riders have a lot on the line when they travel to a race like this and to not let them ride is unfair to them and to the spectators or "Fans" of BMX.
Regardless tomorrow morning, i will have my alarm set at 3:45 to get up to watch the 2011 UCI Worlds Live on Freecaster.tv and will be cheering on all of the riders that made it into the cut.
