Hoping to go to fort William for the World Cup in may after missing a couple of years. Does anyone have any info on if it’s going ahead. my gut says it’ll be cancelled but I hope I’m wrong.
It's hard to say really at this moment in time. My guess is that it will go ahead but not as a spectator event, or maybe limited tickets / strict spectator areas. Was hoping to go up this year too but don't know whether it's worth the risk in terms of making holiday arrangements around it / booking accom etc.
What could possibly go wrong?
I seriously can't see that going ahead in May. Perhaps spectator free, but even then it's a lot of folk descending on a rural location with little in the way of ITU facilities.
Unlikely that it’ll be deemed safe enough for thousands of people to gather by then unfortunately. As mentioned above it might go ahead but with no or very limited spectators.
They'll still be vaccinating over 40's in May so I doubt spectators will be there, but I think it will go ahead.
As above, but people will still turn up and try to spectate. It will be close to impossible to stop people walking about on the hills.
The general rule last autumn was that sporting events with an absolute max of 200 people (participants, support people, officials, etc). Difficult to see how May is any better than sep/Oct were. Also difficult to imagine that the international travel quarantine being introduced this week will be relaxed by then.
Novo Mesto Czech 15-16.05.2021 then a week later
Fort Bill UK 22-23.05.2021 then a bit later
Leogang Austria 12-13.06.2021
So from Czech, the following week travel is to Fort William then a huge schlepp back to Austria...
With all the uncertainty of CV19, spectator issues and added UK Border complications... it would be an easy one to drop from the schedule...
But I do hope it runs. Personally , we are hoping to go to Albstadt, Lenzerheide and Les Gets all being well...
@rickmeister - for the Les Gets leg - would you know if its better to stay around Morzine or Les Gets? Is it easy to travel between the two?
Yoshi, I'm not sure tbh. We would car-camp either way but I found this thread:
https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/les-gets-or-morzine/
Does suggest bike between the two is easy.
I'm sure others will have better up to date info.
TBH I think it will be cancelled. I don’t want it to be as I love it
However I think the economics for the organisers will be fairly grim without the ticket sales a capacity crowd generates. Unless the UCI will underwrite them its hard to see how it is viable. As others have said, the logistics are quite challenging, can you put the whole circus in a viable bubble to travel.
I suspect the closest UK fans will get will be to sit in a lay-by on the M74 A82 and watch the trucks driving in and out
Les Gets leg – would you know if its better to stay around Morzine or Les Gets? Is it easy to travel between the two?
les gets to morzine:
By bike on road: 5 mins, all downhill 30 to 40 mph.
by bike on trails: 1 slow lift up (daytime only), blue singletrack and some fire roads down, a small amount of pedalling 25 mins total?
by car: 5 mins by road. Parking in morzine if it is not attached to your accomodation my be limited/a walk away from your destination.
morzine to les gets:
by bike on road: never tried but would guess 30 minutes uphill pedalling
by bike on trails: 1 fast lift up (daytime only), mainly fire roads and easy singletrack down. 15 mins total?
by car: 5 mins by road. Parking - similar issues but not as bad in les gets in regular weeks, with a WC race in les gets this will change, especially as one of the obvious big car parks becomes the pits.
other benefit of morzine, if the weather rolls in and the lifts are shut, you can return home from a good 2/3rds of the PDS map with little or no pedalling.
@ayjaydoubleyou - thats great thanks! Ive stayed in Morzine a couple of times about 15 years ago and remember getting the pleny lift and then over to Les Gets by trails - coming back I do indeed remember a long downhill back to Morzine along the road - but so long ago its hard to remeber in detail
Also had my stag-do in Morzine 2.5 years ago which I loved (no biking tho)
We did have tickets for Fort William last year and had booked a camp site but obviously that didnt happen. We've ended up booking a B&B this year for it (with free cancellation fortunately) but looking unlikely I'd guess
So - just taken a bit of a risk and booked non-refundable flights for the Les Gets round. I suppose if it gets cancelled we'll still have a lovely week away in the PDS area.....well depending on whether we'll actually be allowed / if its feasible in the rules at that time. Flights have set us back £200 so a risk I'm prepared to take when we've not been away for more than a couple of days over the last 2 years.
Now off to bok some Morzine accomodation!
Booked last year's holiday around it, changed the dates for this year. Will probably still go if it's cancelled if we're allowed. It'll just be two of us in self-catering so fingers crossed. If the death rate is low I think there'll be a lot of pressure to carefully open things up.
They called off the Scottish six trial last mouth which starts in May at Fort William so does not look good.
