The Great Britain Cycling Team start the 2015 UCI BMX Supercross World Cup season on home turf for a third successive season as Manchester welcomes the world’s best riders.
Competition takes place at the state-of the-art National Cycling Centre indoor BMX track from 18-19 April, the first of five stops on the world cup calendar.
Defending series champion Liam Phillips, winner at Manchester for the last two consecutive years, is joined by Kyle Evans, Quillan Isidore, Tre Whyte and Charlotte Green for the Great Britain Cycling Team as they race at their training base.
The team
The first-ever British male to win the UCI BMX Supercross World Cup, Phillips made the perfect start in 2014 with a dominant display that saw him win both the time trial and supercross racing in Manchester.
The 26-year-old can complete a hat-trick if he can muster another display of the sort that has seen him win BMX’s two major honours in the past two years, having been crowned world champion in 2013.
Tre Whyte endured a tempestuous 2014. In Manchester he exited in the quarter-finals but put the consternation of the evening behind him with a stunning display in Rotterdam to win bronze at the UCI BMX World Championships in July.
The 21-year-old from Peckham was 13th in the concluding round of the world cup in Chula Vista.
Two final appearances in 2014 saw the emergence of Kyle Evans as a podium contender on the world level.
Fifth in Manchester marked Evans as one to watch and he backed the ride up in Berlin with sixth place and will aspire to find those displays more regularly in 2015.
An under-16 world champion in 2012 in Birmingham, a double leg fracture delayed Quillan Isidore’s development as he missed the 2014 meeting but progressed on to British Cycling’s Olympic Academy Programme.
The 18-year-old will be keen to make up for lost time.
Like Evans, Charlotte Green demonstrated her capacity to compete with the world’s top riders with a career-best ride to make the finals in Manchester last year, taking fourth.
But first a wrist and then a shoulder injury reduced Green’s participation, missing the majority of the season including the world championships.
An uninterrupted winter of training gives the 20-year-old a solid foundation heading into the season opener.
The competition
An unrivalled field will see Olympic and world champions racing.
Colombian Mariana Pajon, current Olympic and world champion, makes her first appearance in Manchester and is joined by two-time world champion and defending world cup champion Caroline Buchanan of Australia.
Olympic bronze medallist Laura Smulders is also set to start.
In the men’s competition two-time Olympic champion Maris Strombergs, like Pajon, will make a long-awaited UCI BMX Supercross World Cup debut in Manchester.
World champion Sam Willoughby of Australia is also present as the fight for Olympic qualification points continues.
After Manchester, the UCI BMX Supercross World Cup stops at Papendal (Netherlands), Engelholm (Sweden), Santiago del Estero (Argentina) and Rock HIll (USA).
Men's start list
Women's start list
Competition schedule
The venue
Opened in 2011, the indoor BMX track at the National Cycling Centre has established a reputation as one of the world’s best.
The facility has an international standard five-metre start hill and an eight-metre supercross ramp.
How to follow the racing
- Tickets are available through Ticketmaster
- Live reporting and live video on the British Cycling website.
- Qualifying motos, time trial qualification and superfinals take place on Saturday with live video and reporting on the British Cycling website from 4.30pm.
- The finals take place on Sunday with live video and reporting on the British Cycling website from 3pm.
