In a four year life, the Andalucía Bike Race has accomplished significant results that set it as one of the major mountain bike stage races in the World and leader in Spain. Ranked by the International Cycling Union (UCI) as a first class event (since 2013), it has shared out €60 000 prize money, hosted nearly 2.000 riders from 33 different nationalities, who have covered close to 1.700 kilometres of true mountain biking and overcome 46.000 metres of climbing – like ascending five times mount Everest, on a mountain bike!
23 marathon stages (2013 saw the cancellation of one due to snow) along the Southern provinces of Córdoba and Jaén, have served to discover unknown places of Andalusia, placing the area as one of the“must visit” mountain biking venues in Earth, besides its other well-known and broad touristic offer.
Andalucía Bike Race has had top class specialists in its start lists such as Olympic silver medallista and XCO World Champion, José Antonio Hermida; XCM World Champions, Annika Langvad and Alban Lakata; XCE World Champion, Ralph Näf; Under 23 XCO World Champions, Thomas Litscher, Ondrej Cink and Mathias Flückiger;Olympic diploma, Carlos Coloma; besides many other national champions and outstanding mountain bikers.
The six day stage race has also seen other prime athletes from other sports, for example; XTERRA and ITU Cross Triathlon World Champion, Rubén Ruzafa; Long Distance Duathlon World Champion, Eva Nyström; Ultraman World Champion, Jonas Colting; Adventure Raids World Champions, Myriam Guillot and Martin Flinta; Rally Dakar winner, Marc Coma; or Moto3 World Champion Maverick Viñales.
Most of the teams have travelled with at least one other person as companion or assistant, which means that during these years the region has benefited from approximately 25 000 overnights, filling the vast majority of accommodation available in the cities of Córdoba and Jaén, and their surroundings.
Andalucía Bike Race has grown to have 23.500 Facebook followers, nearly 6.000 on Twitter, showing the competition’s enormous worldwide interest. Now facing the fifth edition, from the 22nd until the 27th of February 2015, it will continue being a team race, in which two riders will have to ride together all stages within a two minute gap.