The news broke last night that Freecaster are set to run their own break away world downhill race series in 2012.
The news came to us via Si Paton at the Halo British Downhill Series who said:
“New Freecaster/Nissan DH series is planned around 8 races filmed with min 8 HD cameras and open amateurs on Saturday with small final on Sunday and the top 10 amateurs against 20 seeded pros on Sunday pm. 57% more prize money than UCI.
Just waiting for teams to sign up. Santa Cruz and cg brigade have already. Dates are complementary to UCI. DH1 is just an addition to world cup not a competitive series. All venues consider the optimal routing for teams.”
Info at the moment is pretty tight but it sounds like the venues will be geographically pretty similar to the UCI calendar to allow teams to race both and timings will presumably be pretty similar also. This decision to allow amateur racers is also an interesting one and is (presumably) to encourage riders to attend where they otherwise couldn’t at World Cups and drag riders across to the Freecaster series.
There’s more info here in German:
http://www.mtb-news.de/news/2011/10/03/saisonvorschau-2012-freecaster-tv-loest-sich-mit-eigener-serie-von-der-uci/
There’s obviously heaps of speculation at this stage – not least Freecasters motivation for organising the new series and whether or not the elite riders will make the move to break away from the UCI. We’ll save that for when we’ve got a few more facts…
Super interesting news all round and super interesting times for our sport. More news when we’ve got it sports fans!
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