UCI Snow Bike world championships are actually happening

Chatel, France is getting ready to host the first-ever UCI Snow Bike world championships. What are snow bike world championships, you say? Is this a fat biking thing?

Well, if you missed the UCI’s announcement back in June (there were a few other, more interesting things happening at the time), it’s going to look like a cross between skiing and downhill mountain biking. The two events announced for the February 10-11 inaugural edition will be Super-G and Dual Slalom. The UCI’s promised more information “in due course” but, of course, there’s still nothing concrete. Basically, though, they mirror the ski events.

Is this fatbiking?

Yes, fatbiking exists and is still a popular form of riding in many parts of Canada. No, this is not fat biking world championships. That would make too much sense.

So, what is snow bike world championships? UCI describes it as a combined downhill and slalom type event. The organisation’s stated it will be contested on something closer downhill mountain bikes, not fat bikes, since it appears to tie into the downhill World Cup series (more on that below).

Besides the events and that the winner, or winners, will be crowned world champions, there are still very few details.

Hasn’t this been done before?

Of course this isn’t the first time bikes have been raced on snow. MegaAvalanche, and similar mass-start downhill races have decades of history. In Canada, ski resorts have hosted downhill and slalom type events off and on for years. Remember FrostBIKE at SilverStar Mountain Resort?

But, with the UCI getting involved, the stakes are higher.

World champion of what?

Being the UCI, snow bike worlds couldn’t just be a new, weird, invented off-shoot no one pays attention to that is somehow rewarded with a world championship title (pump track world championships?). No, it has to somehow mess with actual racing, too.

How? It looks like snow bike world championships could, in its first edition, be worth UCI points for the upcoming season. As pointed out on Pinkbike, deep in the UCI rulebook is a change that shows the new world champions will get a hefty 100 UCI points along with their rainbow jersey. With the UCI making it harder and harder to get into World Cup downhill racing, that is not an insignificant footnote.

In fact, from a Canadian perspective, making a wild winter version of downhill (sort of) worth downhill points could be a sweet backdoor for…