PROVIDENCE, RI (BRAIN) — Organizers of the Providence Cyclo-Cross Festival are planning to make a bid to host a stop on the 2015 UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup, they announced Wednesday.
A World Cup cyclocross event has never been held in the U.S., although Louisville, Kentucky, hosted the cyclocross World Championships last February.
"We are assembling an advisory panel and developing our proposal for presentation in December of 2014," said Richard Fries, the event's director. "We plan to work closely with the City of Providence, the UCI, and especially USA Cycling to make this happen. It's a really high mountain for us to climb and we'll need a lot of help."
Organizers announced Wednesday that they had withdrawn from the Shimano New England Professional Cyclo-cross Series to allow more flexibility in scheduling.
"We realized that our aspirations of hosting a World Cup would conflict with the race scheduling of the Shimano and Verge series," Fries said. "We felt it appropriate to allow another great New England race to benefit by membership in the pro series. But the process starts now."
