Beijing, China – Organizers held a press conference on April 2nd at the Laoshan Velodrome in Shijingshan District to announce the upcoming 2025 Asian Mountain Bike Championships. Representatives from the General Administration of Sport of China, the Chinese Cycling Association, the Guizhou Provincial Sports Bureau, and the Zunyi Municipal Government were present to officially confirm the event details.
The championships are scheduled to take place from April 23rd to April 27th, 2025, at the Sanba Reservoir Mountain Bike Training Base in Xinpu New District, Zunyi City, Guizhou Province.
A Premier Asian Event
The Asian Mountain Bike Championships represent the highest level of mountain bike competition in the region and are classified as a Category A event. The Asian Cycling Confederation (ACC) has sanctioned the championships, which are being jointly organized by the Chinese Cycling Association, the Guizhou Provincial Sports Bureau, and the Zunyi Municipal Government.
The event has attracted 269 top athletes from 13 countries and regions across Asia. Competition will be held across four disciplines: the 1.5km Downhill (DHI), the 4km per lap Cross-Country Olympic (XCO), the 900m Cross-Country Eliminator (XCE), and the 4km per lap Cross-Country Team Relay (XCR).
Elest Athletes and Challenging Course
The competition has drawn many high-caliber riders, including Asian Games champions and multiple athletes ranked within the continent’s top ten. The 4-kilometer course is designed to be technical, challenging, and spectator-friendly. It incorporates the unique features of the local karst landscape, featuring steep climbs, rocky sections, and fast descents to thoroughly test the athletes’ comprehensive skills.
Alongside the races, the organizing committee will host sponsor exhibitions, sports equipment displays and demo experiences, and a speciality products fair. This initiative leverages the high-profile event to create a business platform, uniquely blending competitive sport with the promotion of local agricultural products. This approach aims to boost rural sales and consumer supply, serving as a beneficial effort to connect sporting events with rural and urban markets to support local development.
Leveraging Natural Assets for Sports Tourism
In recent years, Guizhou has actively developed new models for sports tourism centered around its unique limestone karst terrain and rich ethnic cultural resources. Under the theme “Mountain Park Province · Colorful Guizhou,” the region promotes distinctive mountain sports like high-bridge jumping, caving, mountain biking, and climbing.
The province has seen the emergence of wildly popular, homegrown sports events with local character, such as the “Village BA” basketball tournament, “Village Super” football league, and “Village MA” marathon. These successes demonstrate a strategy of converting the “attention from events” into “economic growth,” using competitions to stimulate consumption and achieve integrated development of culture, sports, commerce, and tourism.
With its improving sports infrastructure, growing popularity of outdoor sports, and increasingly recognized self-created IP events, Guizhou’s “mountain sports + tourism” model is captivating audiences. This strategy perfectly merges natural and cultural elements, injecting fresh vitality into the province’s sports tourism sector and successfully breaking through as a new and attractive tourism offering.
