Any rider wish­ing to qual­ify for a chal­lenge cat­e­gory at the 2012 UCI BMX World Cham­pi­onships in Birm­ing­ham should do so via the 2011 British BMX Series or the first part of the 2012 British BMX Series. Due to the Olympics, next year’s World Cham­pi­onships will take place in May, which leaves very lit­tle time to host an ade­quate qual­i­fi­ca­tion series in 2012. It is the inten­tion to hold sev­eral qual­i­fi­ca­tion events over the win­ter period 2011–2012 as part of the 2012 Series. The rest of the 2012 series will then be com­pleted in the period around the World Cham­pi­onships as normal.

Every rider at the World Cham­pi­onships must wear their country’s UCI approved shirt and to get these ordered and dis­trib­uted on time. The final dead­line for order­ing shirts is 2nd March 2012.

As there are vary­ing amounts of rid­ers in each cat­e­gory, the fairest way would be to stip­u­late that each rider has to com­pete in a min­i­mum num­ber of British Series events. This num­ber is 5 in the 2011 series or the best of 3 from rounds 1–3 in the 2012 series. This does not affect a rider’s 2011 series rank­ing, which will still be the best 8 from 12 rounds.

Each chal­lenge cat­e­gory has 32 spaces for the host coun­try and there’s every inten­tion to fill those places, but with a grow­ing sport with new rid­ers com­ing into or back in to BMX, we have to leave a lit­tle flex­i­bil­ity. This means that we’ll look at qual­i­fi­ca­tion in sev­eral stages:

Stage 1:
Any rider that has qual­i­fied via the 2011 British Series will have to have com­pleted and have returned their entry/Shirt order by 23rd Decem­ber 2011. All appli­cants will receive con­fir­ma­tion of their entry once received.

Stage 2:
Any chal­lenge cat­e­gory rider qual­i­fy­ing via the 2012 series will need to reg­is­ter their entry by 2nd March 2012.  A list of qual­i­fied rid­ers willbe pub­lished by 24th Feb­ru­ary 2012.

Elite and Junior Male Cat­e­gories:
To auto­mat­i­cally qual­ify for Junior or Elite cat­e­gories, rid­ers will need at least 1 UCI point gained after August 1st 2011. Each coun­try is also allowed to fill 3 places with rid­ers who have no cur­rent UCI points. British Cycling will deter­mine who those 3 rid­ers are.

Cham­pi­onships Female will con­tinue to be run as one class of 17+ Chal­lenge, Junior and Elite combined.

• Any rider com­pet­ing inter­na­tion­ally as an Elite or Junior after August 1st 2011 can­not com­pete as a chal­lenge cat­e­gory rider until after the 2012 World Championships.

The dead­line for Elite and Junior rid­ers will be announced when known.

Auto­matic Qual­i­fi­ca­tion
Any rider mak­ing a chal­lenge cat­e­gory World Cham­pi­onships final in Copen­hagen 2011 will gain auto­matic qual­i­fi­ca­tion to their Chal­lenge class with­out com­pet­ing in the British Series.

2012 UCI Male cat­e­gories 5–6 through to 16 years and UCI 25–29 cat­e­gory
2012 UCI Female cat­e­gories 5–7 through to Cham­pi­onship (Chal­lenge Rid­ers)
• The top 16 ranked rid­ers from the 2011 British Series 20″ cat­e­gory will qual­ify by right
• The top 12 ranked rid­ers from the 2012 British Series 20″ cat­e­gory will qual­ify by right
• Should any of the 2012 top 12 posi­tions be already awarded from the 2011 series the next rider in the rank­ing list will be invited.
• At least four posi­tions will be left vacant as wild­card entries to be allo­cated by the BMX Com­mis­sion.
• A top 16 rider from 2011 not tak­ing up their entry option by 23rd Decem­ber 2011 will have their place offered to the next rider in the 2011 rank­ings.
• Any rider com­pet­ing in a higher cat­e­gory than their age and fin­ish­ing in a qual­i­fy­ing posi­tion will still qualify.

2012 UCI Cruiser Cat­e­gories 12 & under through to 45+
• The top 16 ranked rid­ers (com­pet­ing in their cor­rect cur­rent age) from the 2011 British Series 24″ cat­e­gory
• The top 12 ranked rid­ers (com­pet­ing in their cor­rect cur­rent age) from the 2012 British Series 24″ cat­e­gory
• Should any of the 2012 top 12 posi­tions be already awarded from the 2011 series the next rider in the 2011 rank­ing list will be invited.
• At least four posi­tions will be left vacant as wild­card entries to be allo­cated by the BMX Com­mis­sion.
• A top 16 rider from 2011 not tak­ing up their entry option by 23rd Decem­ber 2011 will have their place offered to the next rider in the 2011 rankings.

2012 UCI 17–24 cat­e­gory
With the wide age spread of these UCI classes and the rider from the 2011 series 16’s mov­ing up as well as the 24 year olds mov­ing up to the 25–29 cat­e­gory etc. the final allo­ca­tion will have to be dif­fer­ent than other classes
• The top 8 ranked rid­ers from each of 16’s and 17–24 from the 2011 British Series 20″ cat­e­gory will qual­ify by right.
• The top 12 ranked rid­ers from the 2012 British Series 20″ 17–24 cat­e­gory will qual­ify by right.
• Should any of the 2012 top 12 posi­tions be already awarded from the 2011 series the next rider in the rank­ing list will be invited.
• At least four posi­tions will be left vacant as wild­card entries to be allo­cated by the BMX Com­mis­sion.
• A top 8 rider from 2011 not tak­ing up their entry option by 23rd Decem­ber 2011 will have their place offered to the next rider in the 2011 rankings.

UCI 30+ and UCI Mas­ters cat­e­gory
• The Mas­ters cat­e­gory will be open to rid­ers on appli­ca­tion up to the max­i­mum of 16 entries.
After those elect­ing to ride in Mas­ters have been removed the qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the UCI 30+ class will be:
• The top 12 ranked Mas­ter rid­ers from the 2011 British Series 20″ cat­e­gory will qual­ify by right
• The top 8 ranked Vet­eran rid­ers from the 2011 British Series 20″ cat­e­gory will qual­ify by right
• The top 8 ranked Mas­ter rid­ers from the 2012 British Series 20″ cat­e­gory will qual­ify by right
• Should any of the 2012 top 12 posi­tions be already awarded from the 2011 series the next rider in the rank­ing list will be invited.
• At least four posi­tions will be left vacant as wild­card entries to be allo­cated by the BMX Commission.

Clause:
• As many BMX rid­ers ride up a cat­e­gory to help with their pro­gres­sion, these rid­ers still have to meet the qual­i­fi­ca­tion cri­te­ria in either the 2011 or 2012 series.
• If there are an unfore­seen num­ber of rid­ers chang­ing cat­e­gory from 2011 to 2012 caus­ing an over sub­scrip­tion of a cat­e­gory, then the low­est ranked rider from the 2012 British Series would not qualify.

Fur­ther Info: email bmx@britishcycling.org.uk