December 19, 2014 – The UCI World Cycling Tour is entering its fifth season with 5 new events and some great changes. Amateurs and masters’ cyclist who are ambitious to compete for the coveted rainbow jersey now get the chance in 13 qualifier events all over the world to win their ticket for the World Championships, early September in Aalborg-Denmark.

The classical venues such as Italy, Slovenia, Denmark, France, Greece, South Africa and Australia remain in the series, but we do also have new locations and venues. The two first events for the 2015 final already took place with Amy’s Granfondo in Lorne, Australia and Amashova Durban Classic in South Africa. Both events had respectively 5000 and 10.000 starters.

While the existing qualifier events scored new participants’ records, we also saw an increasing number of interested new organizers.

Dubai Granfondo is the new location early spring. The metropolitan city in the United Arabic Emirates has iconic landmarks along its road race course in downtown Dubai. The perfect spot to enjoy the sun and qualify for Worlds early season.

If you want to test the course of the 2016 World Championships, you can participate in Perth for a great time trial and an intercity road race end of March. Perth will organize World in September 2016.

Saint Tropez returns as French qualifier after having organized a qualifier event in 2012 and 2013. The jet-set city is the start of a marvelous race over the iconic hills with great views over the sea.

Copenhagen Granfondo will relocate to Elsinore where the time trial was organized in previous years. The Danish Cycling Federation will also be organizing the World Championships in northern Aalborg in September.

Grey County Road Race will be the only North American stop in the UWCT. Blue Mountain village near Toronto in Canada will offer a great experience and challenging courses, both for the time trial and the road race. The organizer Bruce Bird is reigning road World Champion in the 45-49 age group.

The Greek organizer of the Cretan Cycling Challenge moved his event to Skyros, an touristic island with easy access from the mainland and a perfect spot to combine cycling with tourism.

Botucatu in Brazil will remain the only South American qualifier event.    The event near Sao Paolo will also host a high level mtb event in the same weekend.

Tour of Cambridgeshire will have a time trial qualifier in Peterborough. The first ever UK qualifier event will also host a granfondo, but this won’t count as a qualifier event.

Maraton Franja in Ljubljana and Trento in Italy, the organizers of the past two World Championships will keep on building and improving their events with great challenges.

UCI is also proud to welcome Sankt Johann again as part of the UCI World Cycling Tour. The Austrian ski-village was for many years organizer of UCI Masters’ Worlds and will now be the ultimate qualifier event for the Final in Aalborg, Denmark.

Additional events in Germany, USA and Belgium might be added later to the calendar.

For more information click here

UWCT Grey County Road Race here.

Read our intial report on this great news here.