After a year of hard work trying to get the mountain bike world championships back to Durango, the finish line is in sight for Gaige Sippy. But, if everything goes right, more work will be ahead.
Sippy is the architect of Durango’s bid to host the 2030 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Durango. The world will know if Sippy’s hard work has been worth it when the Union Cycliste Internationale, cycling’s world governing body, announces the 2030 world championship venue on Sept. 25.
The former director of the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, Sippy’s confidence level is “quite high” that Durango will be announced as the host of the 2030 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships, 40 years after Durango hosted the first mountain bike world championships in 1990.
On Tuesday, the last component of the bid was completed when the city of Durango formalized its fiscal sponsorship of the event.
“You're cautiously optimistic,” Sippy said. “But, we have had enough good dialogue with the UCI; it's been a very open discussion with them. It's been an open discussion with the city of Durango. It's been an open discussion with Purgatory. In a positive way across the board, we have satisfied everything needed. So unless something weird happens and I don't know even what that would be. I've tried to think through what are the worst case scenarios, right? As everyone does when you're in a situation like this.”
One of the biggest reasons Sippy’s confidence level is quite high is because the UCI first expressed interest in Durango hosting the 2030 world championships. Not Sippy, or USA Cycling. 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 of 2024. Sippy then met with the mayor and city staff to flesh out what it would look like to host the world championships.
After that, everyone took a break. Sippy thought it was important for all parties involved to go away for 60 days after they had a broad understanding of what it would take to do this. After the 60 days, they would restart the process and see if they all felt as good as they did prior about the prospect of hosting the world championships.
“I referred to it as, let's sober up and think because you get a little bit of a sugar high in the beginning,” Sippy said. “You think, ‘Holy cow, they want to do the world championships here,’ and all that kind of stuff.”
Everyone returned to the drawing board in August of 2024 and still felt very good about the idea of Durango hosting. 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 version of the contract which is now sitting in Switzerland.
Now, Sippy and everyone else are in a waiting period to see if the UCI Congress will ratify Durango’s bid and contract in Rwanda on Sept. 25.
“There's a lot of what ifs in this,” Sippy said. “I'm ready to transition from the what ifs to it is going to happen. Let's get going on it. But, it is a tremendous relief to be far enough along to where we have checked every possible box we can check at this point.”
While Durango has been the UCI’s main focus, there are other possibilities out there for hosting the world championships. Sippy thinks the UCI always has established venues with proven infrastructure in its back pocket like Val di Sole, Italy, or Le Gets, France.
But, regardless of his insecurities, Sippy is moving forward. He’s going to the 2025 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships at Crans-Montana in Valais, Switzerland, in September.
One reason Sippy’s going is to see his son, Ivan, compete. He also wants to get a feel for how the world championships go down and also see the people he could be dealing with if Durango’s bid goes through.
If everything goes to plan and Durango is the host of the 2030 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships, there will be five days of racing at Purgatory Resort. Mountain bikers from 55 countries will compete 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.
Even before that, Durango will host a national championship and UCI Mountain Bike World Cup events in 2028 and 2029.
If Durango is announced as the host in 2030, Sippy and Purgatory Resort will go to work to get Purgatory ready by drawing up blueprints and diagrams for what the courses could look like.
The plan is to repurpose the 2001 World Cup downhill course at Purgatory and build new cross-country Olympic and cross-country short track courses.
“I'm old enough that I was at the 1990 worlds and so I watched it the first time,” Sippy said. “I can't tell you how much mountain bike racing has changed since 1990 to now. But as an example, the cross country course back in 1990 went from the base area almost to the top of the ski area and back down. It was a two and a half, almost three hour race. Now they're an hour and 25 minutes.”
Another big difference from the 1990 world championships to now is television coverage. Having cameras in the right spots and the right electrical drops are things the organizers in 1990 didn’t have to worry about. Sippy said television coverage took up 60% of the entire negotiation process to potentially host in 2030.
One event that took place in the 1990 world championships that wouldn’t be at Purgatory in 2030 is the dual slalom because it’s not a world championship event anymore.
However, Sippy said there are plans to honor the history of the dual slalom with some exhibition events at Durango Mesa Park.
Construction on the new cross-country Olympic and short track courses at Purgatory could start as early as next summer, according to Sippy.
“From building out a short track and a cross country, we have Riley (Amos), we have Chris (Blevins), we have Savilia (Blunk), we have Ivan,” Sippy said. “We have all these people here that are racing these and so we will start building a course and laying the framework … making sure that when we do our first event in 2028, we've done some local events on some of that stuff to flesh it out. Then we’d be ready to go into real time when the time comes.”
bkelly@durangoherald.com
