Maybe the most surprising thing about the 2030 World Mountain Bike Championships being awarded to Durango, Colorado is that it wasn't Durango's idea.
Durango is among the hottest of hotbeds of the sport in the United States: host to the first-ever UCI World Championships back in 1990, home to a powerhouse collegiate team (Fort Lewis College) that has produced numerous riders who went on to national championships and pro careers on- and off-road. A who's-who of pro riders including 2023 Vuelta a España winner Sepp Kuss and former short-track World Champion Chris Blevins call it home and have access to over 300 miles of trail right out the door thanks to years of work by local advocates like Durango Trails (formerly Trails 2000). And many of those pros – including Kuss and Blevins – got their start in the sport through the highly regarded Durango Devo youth program.
But as Gaige Sippy and Todd Wells, two members of the Durango 2030 local organizing committee, told Escape Collective, the idea of honoring the 40th anniversary of the UCI World Championships that were first held in Durango actually came from the UCI. "It kind of fell in our lap," said Wells, a multi-time former national champion and three-time Olympian. "The UCI approached Durango about gauging our interest in hosting, and we felt, 'How can we not at least put a bid together and see where we stack up?'"
Even then, it wasn't a slam dunk. Sippy, the longtime organizer of the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic race, said that when the stakeholders sat down with the bid package they realized this was "another kettle of fish" even from holding a large national event like Iron Horse. "We took about a 30, 45-day 'let's go sober up and think about it' period," he recalled. If the community moved forward, it wanted to create an event of the highest quality, and had to make sure it was committed to doing that. "It's exciting and you can get caught up in that, but there's the practical side." Even past experience was not a perfect guide. "The 1990 version of Worlds is different than the 2030 version," he noted.
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