The UCI announced the Cyclocross World Cup calendar for 2024-2025 with sweeping changes including a much later start with the first round on November 24th, and a lack of any rounds in the United States, which had been a fixture of the early season since 2015 with the first World Cup in Las Vegas.
The 2024-2025 calendar will include events in Dublin, Besançon and Benidorm and a new round in Oristano, Sardinia taking the place of the snowy event in Val di Sole. All four of these events have been given 'protected status', meaning the UCI can refuse registration of any race taking place on the day of or the day before the protected World Cup round.
The UCI introduced the new rules in February to ensure the top riders would focus on World Cups over the other lucrative series such as the Superprestige, X2O Trophy, Exact Cross and Hexia Cross in Belgium, Coupe de France and USPCX.
Riders had resisted competing in the full World Cup series since the UCI expanded the calendar from nine rounds to up to 15 in 2021-2022.
Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado and Eli Iserbyt won the 2023-2024 UCI Cyclocross World Cup overall despite winning just three and two of the rounds. Alvarado competed in 12 of the 14 rounds with Iserbyt the only rider to compete in every event.
At the UCI Cyclocross World Championships in 2022, Lars van der Haar was one of the first to openly criticize the expanded calendar, telling Cyclingnews that 14 is "still way too many World Cups. Ten is more than enough. I think that would make the World Cup a lot more attractive as well. I think next year there are 14. I think some riders and also I will skip some of those races."
Riders did go on to skip rounds, especially those outside Belgium that required extensive travel. The issue came to a head last November when UCI President David Lappartient reacted to Thibau Nys' decision to skip the Dendermonde round but opting to race the Superprestige round the next day.
"If a rider prefers to ride a national event during World Cup rounds, you won't ride the following World Cup rounds and therefore you won't ride the World Championships," Lappartient threatened.
"The World Cup is not a competition in which you can pick and choose as you please. Every rider has to play the game."
The UCI did not follow through on the threat to exclude riders from the World Championships but instead required that UCI-registered teams compete in each World Cup with at least one rider in the elite categories in five rounds of the World Cup, with UCI Professional Cyclocross teams being required to send three riders to all of the World Cup rounds.
Instituting a 'protected status' for the December 1 round in Dublin, the December 8 race in Sardinia, December and the January 19 event in Benidorm may not have a huge impact on the national series events but the protected Besançon round on December 29 comes amid the popular 'kerstperiode' of racing in Belgium.
The longstanding Superprestige Diegem and Azencross in Loenhout typically are held around the same date and could be refused registration by the UCI.
The lack of World Cup rounds in North America would also greatly handicap riders from the USA and Canada who relied on the races to gain UCI points toward grid positions for the series and World Championships.
