The world's best riders at World Cup #3 in Nove Mesto na Morave, Czech Republic(Image credit: Michal Cervený)
Gee Atherton (GT Factory Racing) on his way to winning the Fort William downhill World Cup(Image credit: Tour of Japan)
Alexandra Engen (Ghost Factory Racing Team) leading Nathalie Schneitter (Team Colnago Sudtirol) in an early heat(Image credit: Tour of Japan)
More people than ever watched the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup online in 2013. The free coverage, hosted by Red Bull Media House, the UCI's official media partner, drew 1.93 million visitors worldwide, with 1.26 million of them streaming the video coverage live.
The UCI released numbers this week on its website. Numbers were up 34.28 percent from the 1.44 million views in 2012, which was the first year of Red Bull's coverage. In previous years, the UCI had partnered with Freecaster for live World Cup coverage.
Throughout the season, downhill was the most popular, with 1.05 million views. However, all disciplines showed growth: +104.7% for the eliminator, +41.72% for cross country and +22.9 percent for downhill. Those numbers came with two extra eliminator rounds, one fewer cross country round and one fewer downhill round in 2013 relative to 2012.
Fort William, Scotland, which was voted the best downhill World Cup of the year, was the most popularly viewed downhill with 235,357 views. Albstadt, Germany topped the cross country views with 144,927 and the eliminator views with 49,940 views.
