Canmore Wants The Mountain Bike World Cup Back

When Ron Sadesky and two other parents launched the Canmore MTB Classic nearly a decade ago, they wanted to create more opportunities for young Western Canadian mountain bikers. Next week, his son Logan will return to the event as a World Cup racer competing in the race his father helped build.

The Canmore MTB Classic returns to the Canmore Nordic Centre June 10-13, bringing approximately 400 athletes from around the world to compete in Canada's only stop on the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) Continental Series calendar, an international circuit one step below World Cup competition. For organizers, the event is also an opportunity to demonstrate that Canmore can host a mountain bike World Cup.

"The long-term vision is to someday bring a World Cup mountain bike race back to Canmore," said event organizer Josh Peacock.

The race traces its roots to 2016, when Sadesky and two friends saw a need for more national-level racing opportunities in Western Canada, where many of the country's top mountain bike events were concentrated in Eastern Canada.

"All the Canada Cup races and national championships were focused in Eastern Canada," Sadesky said. "We thought we needed to give kids out west a chance to compete in national-level races."

The Canada Cup is Canada's national mountain bike race series. The group successfully applied to host Canadian National Championships in 2017 and 2018 at the Canmore Nordic Centre. The event has continued to grow ever since.

"As we have kept organizing, the word has just gotten out and the race has just gotten bigger and bigger," Sadesky said.

One of the young riders the founders hoped to support was Sadesky's own son, Logan.

Logan was 17 when the first event was held in 2017 and has raced virtually every edition of the Canmore MTB Classic since. Now competing on the World Cup circuit, he won the elite men's short-track race last year, edging fellow Canadian Tyler Orschel by one-tenth of a second, and finished second in the XCO race.

Watching his son progress from provincial racing to international competition has been particularly rewarding, Sadesky said.

"It's been fantastic seeing his evolution. It's a different world going from provincial racing to the national level. To see him win the race last year, and especially with the field that was there, was really special."

Sadesky said the victory carried added significance because it came on home soil.

"This is his home course," he said. "You want him to do well here."

Peacock said providing Alberta athletes with access to international-level competition close to home has remained one of the event's core objectives since it was founded.

"For us, it puts the highest-calibre international mountain bike racing right here in Alberta," Peacock said. "That was the goal from the outset: to give Alberta athletes an opportunity to experience some of the highest-level racing in the world close to home."

Canmore last hosted a World Cup mountain bike event in 1999, and Peacock believes the community has much of what is needed to bring one back.

"They already host World Cups in biathlon and cross-country skiing," Peacock said. "The building was purpose-built for the Olympics, and the trails we use for our race are already world-class."

Peacock said securing Continental Series status was part of demonstrating to cycling's international governing body that Canmore can successfully operate events at that level.

"This was the goal over the last couple of years with getting this Continental Series, was to show the International Federation that we can scale it to that level," he said. "We've successfully done that. We've become one of the marquee events on that Continental Series calendar."

Peacock said the challenge is not the Nordic Centre itself, which already hosts international competitions, but meeting the financial and production requirements of a modern World Cup. Funding remains the biggest obstacle. While the Canmore MTB Classic operates on an annual budget of roughly $250,000, Peacock estimates hosting a World Cup would require approximately $2 million.

"It always comes down to budget," he said. "It's multi-million dollars, up to $2 million just to host one of these things."

Part of that challenge stems from the growing scale of World Cup events. Peacock said Warner Bros. Discovery now controls the commercial and broadcast rights to the series, contributing to higher expectations around television production, sponsorship and event delivery.

"The World Cup is quite the production now," he said.

Sadesky recently attended a World Cup race in Nové Město, Czech Republic, where Logan was competing. The experience offered a glimpse of the scale organizers hope to bring to Canmore one day.

"There were tens of thousands of people there," Sadesky said. "It is an absolute festival."

Peacock said a strong volunteer base is one of the factors that helps demonstrate Canmore's ability to host larger international events. Organizers are still seeking volunteers ahead of race weekend to help with everything from course marshalling and aid stations to athlete services and event operations.

As organizers pursue the goal of bringing a World Cup back to Canmore, Sadesky can already point to one achievement: a local rider who grew up racing the event and now competes against the world's best.