UCI announce four-round 2017-18 Track World Cup schedule

There will be three new venues for the UCI's 2017-18 Track World Cup series with Pruszków, Milton and Santiago to host the premier event for the first time. Manchester's velodrome will host the Track World Cup for the first time since the 2013-14 season as the second of the four rounds. The four rounds are split into two back-to-back weekends of racing in November and December.

Starting with Pruszków on November 4-5, Santiago is the last of the four rounds just over one month later between December 9-10. The 2018 Track World Championships will be held in Apeldoorn, Netherlands (February 28-March 4).

The Milton World Cup is a first for the Canadian city, and first in Canada since 1989, and begins a three-year partnership running through to 2019-20 with the Mattamy National Cycling Centre.

"Cycling Canada is excited to work with the Town of Milton to host the TISSOT UCI Track World Cup over the next three years," Pierre Lafontaine, CEO of Cycling Canada, said of the velodrome built for the 2015 Pan Am Games.

"This event is one of only six in the world every year and for the UCI to trust both Cycling Canada and Milton shows great vision on their part and demonstrates their understanding of the quality of both of our entities."

Built in 2014, Santiago's Parque Peñalolén velodrome will host its first Track World Cup and only round in the Southern Hemisphere for 2017-18. Pruszków's velodrome, the BGŻ BNP Paribas Arena, was the venue for the 2008 European Championships and 2009 Track World Championships makes it debut as a World Cup venue later in the year.

Manchester is the most frequented of the locations for the 2017-18 Track World Cup, having hosted the World Championships on three occasions and World Cups since the 2004-2005 season.

"We are delighted to be able to confirm that Manchester will stage the second round of the 2017-18 TISSOT UCI Track Cycling World Cup series. The venue has a proud history of staging major international track events, and the record-breaking ticket sales for the recent 2017 HSBC UK | National Track Championships in Manchester showed that the appetite for track cycling is stronger than ever," said Jonny Clay, British Cycling's director of cycling.

"This is an extremely exciting time for track cycling – many of the sport’s established names are returning to competition following a break post-Rio Olympics, while the recent UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Hong Kong saw a collection of exciting new riders emerge. This is sure to make for a fascinating TISSOT UCI Track World Cup series and we’re delighted that British fans will get the chance to see the action first-hand."

UCI 2017-18 Track World Cup Schedule

• Pruszków (Poland), November 4-5
• Manchester (Great Britain), November 10-12
• Milton (Canada), December 2-3
• Santiago (Chile), December 9-10.