In exactly one month, the Mountain Bike World Cup starts the new season in Albstadt. The race in the cross-country eliminator discipline, which has effectively dealt the death blow to four-cross, will kick things off. The UCI wants to take the sprint races of the cross-country specialists out of the retort and hopes that the sprint races will receive an Olympic blessing. However, the past few years have shown this: The attractiveness of four-cross has not even come close. This is also because the potential of cross-country eliminators has been criminally underutilized.

The outcry was huge when the UCI surprisingly announced in September 2011 that the Four Cross discipline would no longer be staging a World Cup in future. Although new race formats were subsequently created on a private basis, the four-crossers have never emerged from the cycling ghetto into which they were forced by the UCI. The fact that four-cross is now being separated from the other mountain bike disciplines at the World Championships is no longer surprising to anyone. The flimsy justification: Fourcrossers could not afford the trip to South Africa. The championships will now take place during the Downhill World Cup on September 21 in Leogang and will once again be demoted, this time to the supporting program of the World Cup finals. The message is unmistakable: Four Cross is effectively dead in the minds of the UCI.

From a sporting point of view, the UCI's tactics are completely incomprehensible. The Fourcross World Cup races often offered thrilling competitions. They were fast, exciting and spectacular. They were easy to follow for spectators both on site and at home on screen and offered all the ingredients expected of a modern sport. While cross-country and downhill races are often boring to watch for the general public, four-cross has always been the show element of mountain biking for the masses. And it is precisely this discipline that the UCI is dealing a death blow.The UCI's hopes lie in the cross-country eliminator discipline. It is largely the same race format as Four Cross, only the athletes come from the cross-country division and not the gravity division. What this discipline lacks are the spectacular jumps and the massive banked turns. Cross-country eliminator will therefore never be able to achieve the appeal of four cross. However, the new discipline has a decisive advantage: the competitions can be held in the middle of city centers. The World Championship race in Saalfelden was a prime example of how this race format can work. In the World Cup, however, a different picture emerged: boring circuits far away from the public eye, unspectacular courses and a field of participants often consisting of the third guard of the mountain bike elite. Cross-country eliminator has not come close to replacing the Four Cross discipline in the World Cup.

The UCI has dealt the death blow to one sport, but never raised the other above retort status. Meanwhile, the International Cycling Union is already flirting with the idea of including cross-country eliminator in the Olympic program. Under these conditions, it will be impossible to convince the International Olympic Committee of the sport's appeal. The UCI has much more fundamental problems: it is still looking for a main sponsor for the World Cup. By scrapping the Four Cross discipline, it has probably laid a fatal egg for itself.