Relay race to debut at the 2014 Cyclocross National Championships. photo: tableatny on flickr
Today, at the 2014 Cyclocross National Championships, we’ll see the first-ever collegiate relay held at the end of day (3:15 pm).
The event, modeled after the collegiate mountain bike relay, should add an interesting twist to the collegiate omnium scoring, and may provide an exciting four-lap spectating opportunity.
Here are the rules:
Each team will have up to four riders with at least one woman and one man, and no more than two men or two women. Potential team compositions would be: WM; WMM; WWM; WWMM
One representative of each team starts the race and at the end of each lap, there is an exchange to another rider. The ace will be 4 laps long and riders may not do consecutive laps, so exchanges are mandatory each lap, even if a team has fewer than four riders.
- Any two laps must be completed by women.
- The exchange area will be divided into two lanes. Riders finishing their lap will funnel into one lane, and from the other lane, riders waiting to start their lap will start moving once their teammate has crossed the exchange line in the other lane.
- Riders may not exit their start stalls until their incoming teammate has entered the exchange zone.
- The rider finishing a lap MUST cross the finish line BEFORE his/her teammate. [10 second penalty]
- Teams pick start stall at time of call-up. This stays the team’s start stall for the entire race.
- The event counts toward the Team Omnium only.
