The UCI Integrates BMX Freestyle Park into its Development Strategy
The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) is pleased to announce the integration of BMX Freestyle Park as a new UCI cycling discipline via the launch of the UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup. The first edition of the UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup will be held in 2016. This competition will be part of the FISE World Series, the International Festival of Extreme Sports. It will include a minimum of three rounds (four from the following year) which will take place between February and December and will be a springboard for the UCI Urban Cycling World Championships envisaged for 2017. It is foreseen that the UCI Urban Cycling World Championships will include BMX Freestyle Park, mountain bike cross-country Eliminator (XCE) and trials. To achieve its development goals, the UCI will call on the experience of the company Hurricane Action Sports Company, which has been organising the FISE World Series for nearly 20 years.
Why BMX Freestyle Park?
• BMX Freestyle Park is a spectacular discipline. It attracts young people living in cities, an important target of the Olympic Movement.
• The competitors are judged on figures performed throughout the course (difficulty, originality, style), that must be completed within a time limit. The sporting action is simple to explain and can be televised at a lower cost than many other sports.
• The construction of the sporting infrastructure is low cost as it is delivered ready for use, is temporary and does not require a large surface area. The events take place in venue similar to a skate park.
Commenting on this announcement, the UCI President Brian Cookson declared:
“The integration of BMX Freestyle Park is excellent news for cycling, the UCI, its National Federations and for fans of our sport. The UCI’s strategy is to target cities for the organisation of major events where our own events
will benefit from the conditions necessary to ensure their popular, media and economic success. Our partner Hurricane will provide us with its knowledge of organisation. The UCI will offer the discipline a high level of recognition, and will thus pursue the development of our sport by meeting the expectations of BMX fans. Thanks to this initiative, BMX Freestyle Park and cycling take another step in their continued globalisation.”
“It is with much enthusiasm that we partner with the UCI for the organisation of the UCI BMX Freestyle Park World Cup within the FISE World Series", said Hervé André-Benoit, Hurricane Action Sports Company Chief Executive Officer. “Our partnership is based on shared values and respects the discipline the way FISE has represented it for the past 20 years. Our collaboration will help accelerate the development of freestyle disciplines and we are proud to contribute, together with the UCI, to this new step forward for BMX.”
www.uci.ch
MENTIONS: @fise
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If I was a BMXer, I'd be worried about the UCI taking things over.... RIP BMX park.
No aggro... Just opening debate.
I'm not going to argue about the safety of cannabis or whether it's bad for you because it's really something I know littke about. But your suggestion that something can't be both bad for you and performance enhancing at the same time doesn't make sense. Most well know steroids and performance enhancers are terrible for you in the long run, but they do work.
The fact that you would even ask a question like that shows you have littke little knowledge on the subject of performance enhancing drugs. You need to disconnect the idea that performance enhancing Relates in any way to how healthy something is or how dangerous it can be.
"It's just a massive contradiction. Governments tell you it's illegal because it's bad for you. But it's banned in many sports. Why? Surely if it's bad for, you should get a head start or something. I call bullshit on at least one of those positions."
So if this is your logic regarding performance enhancing drugs, what would you think of steroid users or guys who blood dope in cycling? Those things are clearly bad for you correct? So are you saying that you would give the steroid users and blood dopers a head start?
Your logic is completely flawed. You are "calling bullshit" and saying that both positions (that a substance can be both bad for you and enhance performance) can't be true but everyone knows it is true, that both positions can exist. Is that the case for cannabis? I don't know and I don't really care. That's not the point.
Eh? The conversation is about cannabis, specifically. I was referencing the contradiction, specific to cannabis. You 'don't know and don't really care', as a response to the topic in question, pretty much sums up what you're doing with this. Talk to me about the cannabis contradiction. It's not a problem if you can't or don't care, but you've extrapolated out, to other things, a statement I made about a specific thing. There are exceptions to most rules. I see what you're driving at but its apples and oranges. Steroids ain't cannabis. And cannabis ain't no normal plant either.
One of the biggest misconceptions that people who have no idea about cannabis will often bring up as a supposed reason for it being kept illegal is that it causes psychosis. This has now pretty much been proven false, it actually just exacerbates psychosis if you have a preexisting likelihood to have a mental problems of that ilk (eg family history of schizophrenia). Whats more, in the UK, one of the ethnic groups with the highest rates of cannabis use (Afro-Caribbean) is also the one with the highest genetic predisposition to psychosis. This confounds research where they try and pick random samples of cannabis users/patients with psychosis to explore the link. If there is a significant proportion of Afro-Carribeans in that study, it will skew the data. Hence the data suggests an erroneous correlation between smoking cannabis and getting psychosis.
Whats more, it now comes to light that hey, cannabis could actually have some cool positive effects, both medicinal (for sufferers of seizures/MS), and non-medicinal (in this example improved sporting performance). However, that doesn't change the fact that fundamentally, burning plant matter and inhaling the resultant smoke is not going to be something that your lungs enjoy - it causes cancer and other respiratory diseases.
Thus you can see how yes, false information has been circulated by governments as to the dangers of cannabis use, but the reality is that whilst it can be "good" in some ways, it is still also a harmful thing for your body if your smoking it -- there's no inherent contradiction in something that is a performance enhancing substance also having negative long term effects.
F-OFF UCI!!!!!!
It's all about the $$$$$$$$.
Maybe we should concentrate on Downhill in the Olympics. I know just the man!
Anything that gets jumps, ramps, and your guys sponsored is more than ok to me!
Curious if the boys are going to boycott it or get on the UCI bandwagon?
As great as this is for bmx being taken more seriously it could also be dampening the 'spirit' of freestyle
Like I wonder if a rider drops in for a rebel run across the course to pull that line that everyone talks aboot
Whether he'd get props or dsq'd???
As for the information itself, R.I.P. bmx guys... I just can't believe it. Freestyle event falling at the UCI's rigid rules? Good luck. Hopefully you won't be obliged to wear a proper dress, because loose fit is too dangerous while tricking.
Is UCI informed?