Sure, there's plenty more cyclocross racing on the horizon with the 2016 Cyclocross National Championships and of course the World Championships at the end of January 2016. But the end of the calendar year has us thinking back over the last 12 months and reflecting on those moments that had the cyclocross community talking.
Here, we look back over some of 2015's main events, our favorite moments from the last year and the tech that shaped this season thus far.
Have a favorite cyclocross moment for 2015 of your own? Share it with us on our Facebook Page or over on Twitter. #cxm2015lookback
Cross Vegas Becomes World Cup Event
It finally happened. The US finally got a World Cup race. And it only made sense that it was “America’s Biggest Cyclocross Race,” Cross Vegas, that earned the distinction.
After eight years of fine tuning the event, Cross Vegas promoter Brook Watts announced at the 2015 World Championships in Tábor, Czech Republic, that the ninth edition of the race in Las Vegas in 2015 would in fact be the 2015 UCI World Cup opener. Of course, rumors abound before then that the famous night race at the Desert Breeze Soccer Complex on the first night of Interbike would join the World Cup calendar. But it wasn’t until 2015 that the idea became a reality.
For its part, the 2015 edition was the show that everyone hoped for and expected. Cross Vegas 2015 saw the start of a remarkable season for the young Belgian Wout van Aert.
Wout van Aert became the new CrossVegas King in the event’s inaugural year as a World Cup race in 2015. © Matthew Lasala / Cyclocross Magazine
And for the women, the race crowned Katarina Nash on her adopted home soil. Katerina Nash only lost one cyclocross race in 2015, and that was due to a shoe mechanical. It’s too bad we won’t see her contest Worlds again this season.
Nash has always used CrossVegas to kick off her season, and returned in 2015 to win the World Cup event. © Matthew Lasala / Cyclocross Magazine
