NewYork

Fifty athletes recently qualified for the next UCI Cycling Esports World Championships thanks to a new continental qualification pathway established by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) and its partner Zwift.

The discipline’s UCI World Championships for men and women will be held on 26 February 2022, over 2.5 laps of Zwift’s New York Knickerbocker route (54.9km with 944m of climbing).

To be in with a chance to participate, a total of 550 athletes lined up across the men’s and women’s continental qualifiers in Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania and Pan America at the end of November.

All Continental Championships took place on the Zwift platform’s Watopia world, with athletes completing two laps of the Figure 8 Forward route, for a total of 59.5km and 508m of elevation. Two performance boosters (power-ups) were available during racing: Aero, which makes the rider more aerodynamic for 15 seconds and Lightweight, where the rider can shed 10% of their weight for 15 seconds. Each rider had a 50% chance of being awarded a powerup at each powerup location.

The women’s races took place on Saturday 27 November, while the men competed over the same course the following day. As with the UCI World Championships, the event was governed by the UCI Regulations with regards riders’ equipment and hardware (trainers, power metres, heart rate monitors, cadence sensors etc).

In addition to the 50 riders who qualified for the 2022 UCI Cycling Esports World Championships thanks to the continental pathway, 23 National Federations had already been offered automatic entry based on diverse criteria such as the size of their cycling esports communities, and the depth of talent based on both esports and UCI road rankings. These National Federations must select their final squads by 21 December. Wildcard entries will make up the remainder of the field, for a maximum of 100 women and 100 men.

A page dedicated to the 2022 UCI Cycling Esports World Championships will be available shortly on the UCI website.

Highlights from the continental qualifiers can be found here.