After over a year of work behind the scenes, it’s official: The mountain bike world championships are coming back to Durango.
The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the cycling world’s governing body, announced on Thursday in Rwanda at the UCI Congress that Durango will host the 2030 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships. The 2030 world championships will mark the 40th anniversary of Durango hosting the first UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in 1990.
“It’s fantastic,” said bid architect and local organizing committee member Gaige Sippy. “… Now, you roll up your sleeves and you start the real work. It’s been a little bit of a dress rehearsal, to some extent.”
Eight hundred mountain bikers from 55 countries will come to Durango to compete at Purgatory Resort in cross-country Olympic team relays, cross-country Olympic junior races, cross-country Olympic U23 races, cross-country Olympic elite races, downhill junior and elite races and E mountain bike races.
Durango is expected to host a 2029 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup event as part of the responsibility of hosting the world championships. Sippy said there’s a good chance Durango also hosts a 2028 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup event.
The city of Durango has earmarked $200,000 in tourism dollars for the world championships; the UCI requires an applicant to host the world championships to put up a security amount of $188,000 to be held by the UCI until the world championships.
While $200,000 is a lot of money, it’ll pay off with the economic impact the event will have on Durango. City prosperity officer Mike French said in a previous Durango Herald article the 2022 UCI Cyclocross World Champs in Fayetteville, Arkansas, had a direct economic impact of just under $10 million and generated $1 million in tax revenues.
More recently, the 2024 UCI BMX World Championships event in Rock Hill, South Carolina, had a $30 million direct economic impact and generated $2.6 million in tax revenues, French said.
“This is a momentous occasion for our community,” Durango mayor Gilda Yazzie said in a press release. “The city is honored to be chosen by the UCI to host this historic anniversary year, and we are thrilled to partner with Durango Cycling Championships and Purgatory Resort.”
To celebrate the announcement, the city of Durango is hosting the Ride with the Champions bike parade on Friday. Durango’s champions, Sepp Kuss, Todd Wells, Riley Amos, Bailey Cioppa, Leah Morozowhich, Zoey Waage, Cooper Wells and others will be leading the parade which starts at 5:30 p.m. next to Buckley Park.
While it’s a relief for the anticipation and finger-crossing to be over, Sippy’s confidence level in Durango’s chances of hosting have been high for a while. The main reason is the UCI first expressed interest in Durango hosting the 2030 world championships. The UCI reached out to USA Cycling President Brendan Quirk about Durango hosting. Quirk reached out to Christopher Blevins and Blevins reached out to Sippy.
Quirk then came to Durango to discuss the requirements and start the work on the bid in June 2024. Sippy then met with the mayor and city staff to flesh out what it would look like to host the world championships.
Sippy led the way as Durango proceeded with the bid process and the bid was sent off in January.
The UCI then reviewed the bid for 60 days, and if it liked what it saw, it would send a contract. The UCI sent a contract in May. Sippy and the UCI went back and forth for about two months editing the contract of what the world championships would look like if Durango is selected. Sippy signed the sixth and final version of the contract before it was confirmed on Tuesday that Durango would be the host city.
Since Sippy signed the final version of the contract, he went to Switzerland at the end of August and early in September to witness the 2025 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships.
It was an opportunity for Sippy to meet all the people with the UCI in Switzerland that he has been emailing for the past year. He got to chat with them about the next steps after the announcement was made public. Sippy also talked with different members of the UCI business model that are in charge of executing the world championships on the ground.
While Sippy was on the ground in Switzerland, he got to look at how the 2025 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships were laid out. Although Sippy has been involved with running cycling races for a lot of his life (he was the director of the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic for over a decade), Sippy got a lot of ideas for how Durango should set up the world championships.
“The venue at Purgatory will be easier to manage than what they had in Switzerland,” Sippy said. “They had things so spread out over there that even in the small town that they did the cross country in, they had it spread out so there was pits here and there was pits there and there was tech zone here. Nothing was together. So we have the opportunity to tighten it up on our end and have a little more of smaller footprint that'll be better for spectators.”
Sippy saw firsthand how big cycling is in Europe. He enjoyed seeing the amount of spectators there was at the world championships and how the fans were managed in Switzerland with all the television screens and the fan zones.
In the last few weeks, Sippy and the local organizing committee have been talking to television production crews and vetting them to see what company will be the best fit. Sippy also knows the technology with broadcasting events is changing so fast that the capabilities of these companies will drastically different even in 2028 when the first international event comes to Durango.
There’s also a large fundraising component to hosting this event, with Sippy and the local organizing committee working on raising funds from grants, donations and long-term partnerships.
The courses for the world championships at Purgatory will also need to be built or repurposed. The plan is to repurpose the 2001 World Cup downhill course at Purgatory and build new cross-country Olympic and cross-country short track course.
From 2028-2030, Durango should have a lot of mountain bikers competing at a world-class level. Christopher Blevins will be in his early 30s and should be still competing at a high level in cross-country mountain bike. Asa Vermette will be in his early 20s and should be one of the top men’s elite downhill riders. Riley Amos and Savilia Blunk should be in the prime of their careers in the elite cross-country categories. Riders like Bailey Cioppa, Ivan Sippy, Lauren Aggeler and others should also have the chance to represent Durango on the world stage.
“It has been a lot of the reason I have been so motivated to get this year and not just because of my son (Ivan),” Sippy said. “But because I was an original Durango Devo board member, way back when this whole Devo thing came together. I'm such a firm believer in how good sport can be for kids ... we have a town that's into cycling. Todd (Wells) and I ... hope this inspires these up and comers and the kids that are right behind that.”
bkelly@durangoherald.com
