SpongeDad

There's individual country championships, there's UCI points, the UCI World cup and Superprestige.

Are these thing different? related? same thing?

Am I correct that the "World Championship" race is coming up in Czech Repub. - is prize for winning that race or having the most points from UCI series?

(Given that we're all bumming that the season is basically over, what are the odds that this doesn't get answered until August?)

flargle

I believe national championship races don't earn UCI points because they are restricted to people from that specific country. The rules about who gets to race, how people are assigned start positions, etc, vary from country to country. Most Euro countries hold their national championship race on the same weekend (last weekend). The U.S. holds our race earlier, so that guys can then go over to Europe and not have to come back.

There are three international "champions" every year, in decreasing order of prestige: World Champion, World Cup winner, and UCI points leader. World champ means you were best on that one day, World Cup means you were most consistent over the entire year.

World Cup races earn lots of UCI points. But there are a bunch of other races and race series, like Superprestige, Gazet van Antwerpen, US Gran Prix, etc etc etc, that earn UCI points, too. Different races get different categories, like C1, C2, etc, which indicate their level of UCI points and therefore their approximate level of prestige.

UCI points are important because they get you start position at events, most importantly the World Championship race. Look at the start line of the 2009 race, it's all blue (Belgian) jerseys. They earned the right, and then leveraged that by playing team tactics on a very very fast course. Guys like Sven Nys, Vervecken, etc, were willing to sacrifice themselves by repeatedly attacking to soften the field, and then sitting up when Albert attacked and got the gap over the field that stuck and led to his victory. It's historically unusual for the Belgians to cooperate at a Worlds race, but they were embarrassed that a Dutchman had won it the year before.

Here is the schedule for the rest of the year:
https://www.cyclingnews.com/cyclo-cross/races/calendar/

There are two more World Cup races and then the World Championships on January 30. Your best chance for seeing races live is checking https://www.cyclingfans.com/

SpongeDad

Thanks - exactly what I needed to know.