The 3-round CX80 MTBO World Cup gets under way Wednesday, 26th April with the 4-race European MTBO Championships (EMTBOC) in Loulé, southern Portugal.
Last year’s World Cup winners, Camilla Søgaard DEN and Krystof Bogar CZE, will be striving to repeat their success; Søgaard will also be defending her European Sprint title won in Lithuania last year. Vojtech Ludvik CZE, a close challenger to Bogar’s top World Cup placing in 2022, was men’s European Sprint champion.
Defending champions in Long distance are the Swiss rider Simon Braendli and the Lithuanian Gabriele Andrasiuniene. There was no Middle distance race in EMTBOC last year; the 2021 Middle winners were Simon Braendli and the Danish rider Nikoline Splittorff.
Czechia holds the European Mixed Relay title, finishing ahead of Austria and Sweden in 2022, and they are favourites to retain the title this year. There will be keen competition for all the medals in Loulé with all the top European riders present; seventeen nations will be represented. Finland in particular will be pushing hard to win medals; they won both men’s and women’s relays at last year’s World Championships, and Ruska Saarela and Samuel Pokala both finished third in last year’s World Cup standings.
The European Junior and European Youth Championships will be held concurrently with EMTBOC. Loulé, the Event Centre for all the championships, is 20 km from Faro airport on Portugal’s south coast, and the area offers very varied terrain. The EMTBOC programme starts with Middle Distance in quite hilly Mediterranean forest.
The Mass Start (Long Distance) is the following day, in mixed pine forest and urban park with fewer contours and many paths. The Sprint, in mixed forest and taking in a motocross circuit, is on Day 3, and the championships end with the Mixed Relay in urban and forested terrain that is moderately hilly with many paths and tracks.
This year’s World Championships and Junior World Championships are in Czechia in the second half of August, and the final World Cup round, incorporating the under-23 World Championships, is in Italy in late September. The World Masters MTB Championships will be held in Slovenia in mid-August.
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EMTBOC Programme
26th April, Middle Distance
27th April, Mass Start (Long distance)
28th April, Sprint
29th April, Mixed Relay – teams of 3 riders including at least one woman (up to 4 teams per nation)