Press and Media Center

XTERRA Cup Series Summary

While there are still 22 XTERRA Points Series races across the country between now and the USA Championship in Utah this September, the inaugural eight-stop XTERRA Cup Series has concluded and "Kahuna Dave" Nicholas, the managing director of the XTERRA World Tour, brings us this report.

The first season of the 8 XTERRA Regional Cup races is over.  For the first time in our history, XTERRA championship style racing was brought to every region during one season.  We started out in May in the desert of Las Vegas and just finished up in July in the Rocky Mountains at Beaver Creek.

So how did it go?  Entries for the whole series outpaced the number of entries from 2008, but last year we had four events, this year we had eight.  This is very good news especially in the face of a major recession, people losing jobs, pay cuts and high travel costs.

Three of the events were brand new locations – Lake Las Vegas, Farragut State Park in Idaho and Sugarbush Resort in Vermont.  Two were existing Champ sites in Pelham, AL and Richmond, VA  and the three others, Battle Creek,  MI, North Little Rock , AR, and Beaver Creek Resort in Colorado were upgraded from points series races to Cup races.

The pros supported the new idea in fine style.  Each pro could count up to five of the eight events going into the XTERRA finals in September and we had 12 men and 10 women pros do at least  five or more of the Cup events and a total of 50 different pros; 28 men and 22 women, raced with us during the year.

Bringing the races closer to the people with those precious Maui World Championship slots was popular as well and people who qualified at the Cup races and entered Maui have doubled.

The Cup race series had its highs and lows, but along with a very stout XTERRA Points Series schedule of events we now have a minimum of seven races in each region of the country giving our athletes a whole season of events.

We’re already planning for 2009 and we hope to have a schedule firm before Maui.  What can you expect?  We’re expecting that with a full season behind us for everyone to get familiar with the new system, the Cup races will be bigger and even better for 2010.