Nobody Knows How to Qualify for Worlds
Blog #39
For the past month or so, I’ve been tracking the qualification process for the UCI World Championship semi-finals on October 3. And let me tell you, it has been a hot mess.
As a reminder, this was all supposed to be easy.
First, federations would be given quotas based on a formula created by the UCI. The federations could then place riders in the semi-finals up to the quota amount they had received, using a process of their choosing.
Second, MyWhoosh would hold four open public qualifier events, where any rider who hadn’t qualified through the federation process could secure a spot in the semi-finals.
Simple, right? Wrong. The process has been in disarray from the start, leaving riders confused about what they need to do to qualify for the semi-finals and participating in races they don’t need to be just to be safe. All told, it’s an example of how misplaced trust in the UCI - and, in particular, its member federations - has created a situation where many of the people in charge of cycling esports’ biggest event don’t actually care about cycling esports.
… This Timing Doesn’t Make Sense?
The cracks appeared early.
Implicit in the process described above is some pretty rigid sequencing. First, the federations nominate their riders. Second, any remaining riders not in that pool take their shot in the open qualifiers. Absent that sequencing, the whole thing sort of falls apart.
Enter the UCI. I don’t know how or why this happened, but here is the schedule that got put out:
August 31: The deadline for federations to tell the UCI how many of their allocated places they intend to fill.
August 6, 8, 22, and 17: Open qualifier races take place.
See the issue? As MyWhoosh told me a couple of weeks ago:
The ruleset was originally designed with the sequence of national federation qualifiers in mind. However, due to various circumstances, the MyWhoosh public qualifiers and national federation qualifiers will now take place in parallel.
We expect athletes to participate in both their respective national federation qualifiers and the MyWhoosh qualifiers. To avoid duplicate selections, MyWhoosh will announce its list of qualified riders only after all national federations have confirmed their representatives.
Nottt a great start. I went into a lot more detail on this for paid subscribers, but the upshot here is that riders were being put in an impossible position: if their federation didn’t have its sh^* together, they had to bust their ass racing in open qualifiers just to be safe, because no one but their federation (let alone MyWhoosh) could guarantee they’d get a nomination.
Oh, Those Federations
As part of creating our live tracker, Pro E Cycling has consistently checked every one of the websites for the 30 federations that received quotas and contacted each of the federations at least once. As of today, only nine of the 30 have been fully transparent as to their selection process (and the transparency of one of them - the Philippines - was just that they aren’t nominating any riders).1
That leaves 21 federations where the public has limited2 or no insight into what is going on. Are those federations nominating riders? If so, what’s the process? No. Freaking. Clue.
It would be one thing if they were telling athletes but not the public - I’m just a guy, a fan of the sport. I get why federations don’t respond to my emails. But a lot of riders are completely in the dark as well. Those riders are in an impossible position: they are completely dependent on - and at the mercy of - their federations to secure a nomination. So it’s no wonder they won’t speak out. They really can’t, since criticizing their federation publicly would risk their chances of making the semi-finals.
The power structure here is incredibly damaging. Federations hold immeasurable authority over their riders. But many have abdicated the responsibility that comes with that power to advocate for their athletes and advance the sport. And when federations sit on their hands and do nothing, it creates a power vacuum, a lazy homeostasis, where cycling esports remains an afterthought to which the UCI at the top of the chain and fans at the bottom pay less attention.
The solution here is so, so easy, but will never be implemented. The core of the problem is that too many of the UCI’s member federations don’t care about cycling esports. And that is what it is. Whatever. We can’t make them care. But that dynamic makes it impossible to run a World Championship qualifying process that runs through - and entirely depends on - involvement from the federations.
So here is my proposal: the UCI should issue an ultimatum to the federations. Sh^* or get off the pot. If you are, say, the Swedish federation or the Brazilian federation and are holding events, nominating riders, and otherwise pushing the sport forward, that’s fu*^ing awesome. You’re good. Keep doing your thing. We sincerely appreciate it.
But if you are one of the federations that isn’t even bothering to nominate riders, then the UCI should offer community-borne groups in that country the opportunity to form their own federation just for the purposes of cycling esports. If I were the UCI, the ultimatum to the federations would be that, at minimum, they must: (1) hold an annual national championship; and (2) actively and transparently participate in the nominating process for the World Championship.3 If a federation isn’t willing to do the bare minimum, then the UCI should open the floor to community organizations to fill the void.
Two other things about this proposal:
First, the two requirements above really are the bare minimum. Holding a single national championship race doesn’t take much work, and I bet MyWhoosh would even pay you to do it. You could even use that race as the qualifying event for worlds, similar to what Brazil did.
Second, there is (albeit unsanctioned) precedent for this approach. This year a new community group called Cycling Esports UK put on a UK national championship in the face of continued… um… let’s say reluctance… by British Cycling to do so. I know the community views the winners (Thomas Perren and Maria Holdcroft) as entirely legitimate national champions, even if the race wasn’t officially sanctioned as such.
But… who cares? This is the entire point - when a federation refuses to do the bare minimum, the UCI should be empowering other groups that are actually willing to invest the time and resources to advance the sport.4
To be clear, the idea here is that existing federations get the first bite at the apple. The ideal outcome is that they do start getting off their asses and do what they are supposed to be doing. But if they consistently refuse, the UCI has other options. It should exercise them.
Lack of Clarity in the Open Qualifying Races
To make matters worse (and circling back to the nuts and bolts of qualifying for this year’s semi-finals), riders are completely in the dark as to what they need to do in the open races to qualify.
The initial idea was that: (i) the federations would fill their quota spots, and (ii) the rest of the 150 spots5 in the semi-finals would be allocated through the four open qualifying events, giving equal weight to each event. So imagine that 110 male riders were nominated by their federations. That would mean that 40 spots remained, and so the top ten riders from each of the qualifying events would make it through.
By my math, the UCI initially allocated 126 quota spots to the federations for men and 135 for women. That means that the top six places in each open qualifier for the men, at minimum, will make the semi-finals, and the top three will for the women. However, we knew from the start that the federations would not use all of those spots:
For example, we know now that Australia has forfeited one male spot, meaning that the maximum possible quota spots for men is now 125.
For the women, it’s down to 130 since we know Lithuania is forfeiting two of its spots and the Philippines all three of its spots. This increases the number of available spots for women in the semi-finals per open qualifier to five.
The trouble with the federation nominations coming in after the open qualifiers though is that we don’t know how many more of the quota spots will go unused, which means that riders don’t know exactly how low they can place in a given qualifier and still make it through. This has led to several instances of athletes racing in open qualifiers when, by my math, they have already qualified for the semi-finals through an earlier open qualifier. Here are some examples:
In the second open qualifier, Kaan Kayin finished in sixth place. According to the above math and the qualification process as explained by MyWhoosh, that result guaranteed Kayin a spot in the semi-finals. Yet Kayin raced in the third open qualifier as well, presumably because there has not been an affirmative statement by the UCI or MyWhoosh that placing in the top six of an open qualifier gets you through.
Similarly, Geoffrey Millour and Henrik Öijer raced in the fourth open qualifier after both had already placed second in earlier qualifiers, presumably for the same reason that Kayin felt the need to race again.
On the women’s side, Christine Schneider and Julia Montgomery also raced again after having seemingly qualified.
There are other examples where riders have wasted bullets in the open qualifiers when they have seemingly already met the qualification criteria laid out by their federation.
David Weinstein, Sarah Roach, and Kristen Hohl all appear to have qualified through the U.S. qualification process. But (I’m guessing) because those results of the U.S. qualification race have yet to be verified, Roach and Hohl participated in the fourth open qualifier.
Weinstein did as well, though I’m not really sure why. He finished on the podium in this year’s U.S. national championship, which according to USA Cycling should have guaranteed him a nomination.
Similarly, Josh Harris raced in the first open qualifier, just a couple days after AusCycling announced qualification criteria that guaranteed him a spot both because he won the Australia national championship and because he finished in the Top 10 in the 2024 World Championship. Still, Harris raced in the open qualifier, presumably because his nomination hadn’t yet officially been made.
It’s also possible Weinstein and Harris just wanted a practice run on the semi-finals course, since the open qualifiers are being run on the same course. If that’s the case, fair enough and kudos to them. But it wouldn’t explain the scenarios described above, where athletes are racing in multiple qualifiers.
Kate Trdin, Simon Walter, and Brigitte Filensky raced in the open qualifiers as well, only to later receive nominations from their federations.
These ones made sense though - the federation nominations for each of these riders came after the open qualifiers, so they had to race.
This is emblematic of what’s going to happen to a lot of riders as the nominations roll in after August 1 though. These three won’t be the only ones.
The problem with all this is that I can’t really blame the athletes. Again, neither the UCI or MyWhoosh has actually told them what they have to do in the open qualifiers to make it through! If you apply the criteria they’ve laid out - and do a bit of math - you can deduce it. But if you are one of these athletes and are trying to qualify, why would you take your chances and trust that the criteria won’t change under your feet again? Nothing about the process thus far has inspired confidence that it won’t. Better to race and leave nothing to chance.
These are the United States, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Lithuania, Germany, and the Philippines. There are some that have been partially transparent as well, which is helpful but not entirely (e.g., British Cycling has said a panel will decide which riders to nominate, but it hasn’t said anything about the qualification criteria or who those riders are).
Of these 21, four have provided partial transparency (Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland).
I don’t propose a requirement that they actually fill their quota spots though, because it is true that for certain federations it is genuinely the case that there isn’t sufficient interest to do so. See the recent USA men’s qualifiers, where there were seven spots up for grabs but only six riders showed up.
It’s very possible - even likely - that in a country where a federation is sitting on its hands, there also isn’t enough organic community support to form an organization like Cycling Esports UK. And if that’s the case, that’s okay! The whole idea here is to remove the federations as roadblocks. But that won’t magically mean that cycling esports becomes popular in a given country.
Who were the public qualifiers? And how did they do in the Semis?