INTRODUCTION OF ‘CAREER NUMBERS’ IN DOWNHILL WORLD CUP
Words by Mike Rose
I love the idea of ‘career numbers’ in downhill racing that is being brought in for the 2025 season onwards. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. I mean, who doesn’t love a number!? I’m pretty sure it has been done before. Back in the mid 2000s I have a pretty clear image in my head of a bluey turquoise and orange Troy Lee Designs jersey with a big, fat number 2 on the back and the name HILL running across the top of it.
“All former Elite winners of a UCI World Cup round who are still competing, will be required to select personal colours and a unique career number, adding individuality and a sense of legacy to the competition on top of helping build rider identities and bringing fans closer to the sport.” 2025 UCI MTB World Cup rules.
It’s not really a new thing. Numbers and sport are been around for a long time. Team sports traditionally number players by position, 1 to 15 in rugby for example, others by squad number, just look at one of the most famous of all time, basketball star Michael Jordan and his #23. Back in the 1970s motorcycle racers like the great Barry Sheene apparently started a two-wheeled trend where they picked a number and stuck with it for the whole year and beyond. Sheene was of course the iconic number 7, but before that (just like in most other sports) riders and racers were allocated a number depending on the event or their current ranking. But it stuck, these ‘career numbers’ became a permanent fixture, symbolic, part of a rider’s identity and of course a great branding and marketing tool too.
In fact it seems that this is where it all came from. Probably influenced by how numbers were being used in other sports, in 2000 Supercross/Mototcross went the same way. An article in Motocross Action Mag explains, “Back in the era of action figures and motocross toys, the factory riders’ agents lobbied for the AMA (American MX Assoc.) to give their riders a recognizable permanent number that they could keep for as long as they raced. Why? So that their clients could sell products with their number on it (without having to worry about the current number being a thing of the past by the time the toy came out).” That’s just one opinion, but it sounds about right and it seems to have worked.
There are so many examples of this now, just on two wheels almost every ‘famous’ rider has their own number: #46 Valentino Rossi, #4 Ricky Carmichael, #2 Jeremy McGrath, #3 Eli Tomac, #222 Tony Cairoli, #199 Travis Pastrana… the list is endless. Some numbers have meaning, 5 x MXGP World Champion Tim Gajser’s #243 is in tribute to his brother who died in a motorcycle accident when he was a very young child. March 24th was his brother’s birthday. Other numbers appear a bit arbitrary, slightly by chance, sometimes because of superstitious reasons or just personal preference.
Some mountain bikers do already associate themselves with numbers, these are usually riders that have raced motocross at some point. Like ex-World Cup downhill racer and now commentator Rob Warner is always #970, and ex-extreme sports athlete Shaun Palmer is #555. In mountain biking in the modern age I can only really think of Tahnee Seagrave and the #57, she’s been ahead of the curve for a while with that one. She has taken that number and made it her own… well, I guess hard enduro superstar Billy Bolt and his #57 may have something to say about that! So you’ve got TS57 and BB57. Looking at Tahnee’s Fox collabs and Billy Bolt’s underpants and clothing range I’d say that that the marketing dream seems to be working for both of them.
An interesting detail in the rule this year is the order in which riders to get to pick their number (anything between 2 and 999). This is not going to be a free for all. The picking-pecking order is based on who has won the most World Cups, so currently for the men that is Aaron Gwin and for the women (if she is still racing) it’s Rachel Atherton. Interesting fact, Gwin was #13 for 2014 season and didn’t shy away from it. In the photo above is a great big sublimated 13. I’m guessing that after World Cup wins it is based on 2024 World Cup standings? And what about World Championships winners, and all the non-World Cup winners? More than likely they’ll just be allocated a number from what’s left at each round?
So when the World Cup rolls out for the first round of 2025 in Poland it will probably be slightly confusing, especially for the more casual viewer, but that is kind of the point. It’s going to take a bit of time for riders and numbers to become established in the public eye. Number 1 is exclusively reserved for the current leader of the UCI World Cup standings, but does that mean that Loic Bruni and Vali Holl (as current World Cup Champs) will be rocking the #1, or will they be on a #666 plate? The number of the beast, right? The #1 plate will be given to the current World Cup overall leader, so there will be situations where numbers collide… which should be fun. Pierron, Bruni, Vergier, Hart, Nicole, Seagrave, Balanche, etc., will all be getting early picks, so it will be intriguing to see what they choose (#57 is a dead cert, and probably Laurie Greenland and #95) and how they use their number to their advantage. For many it could be a valuable asset for years to come.
As I said, I’m all for it, but I’m not sure what ‘personal colours’ means!
