The first Onewheel Race for the Rail World Championship is slated for July 30-31. The new enduro sport’s top riders will compete for $20K.
It’s like Mad Max took over a high-end ski resort. Electrified Onewheel boards will fly down snowless, dusty slopes. Their dirt-caked riders will carve and skrrrrt around corners, hit thrutchy stops, get “craigslisted” (aka wrecked), and whir across the finish line in a monowheel enduro race.
Competitive, off-road Onewheeling is a relatively new genre in the world of outdoor sports — 2020 especially saw the sport’s rise in popularity around the globe. In fact, participation was substantial enough to warrant national qualifiers and get organizers talking about a World Championship.
And on July 30, Onewheel’s inaugural Race for the Rail World Championship goes down. Here’s what we know.
Onewheel World Championship
Onewheel’s Race for the Rail World Championship will take place at Utah’s Snowbasin Resort. The event brings in the world’s top 20 Onewheel riders who will “boardercross-style race” for their share of the $20,000 purse. Riders will have qualified for the event through the Onewheel Racing League’s three national qualifiers.
The race boots up at 10 a.m. MDT on Friday, July 30, with the women’s race. The Women’s Finals comp will commence Friday at 6 p.m. Saturday is men’s race day. Saturday’s comp will begin at 10 a.m., with the Men’s Finals happening Saturday at 6 p.m.
The competition will place riders into brackets and groups of four. Four at a time, the racers will descend high-grade, off-road trails. The two fastest riders in each division will advance to the consecutive round.
Where to Watch
This year’s championship will allow for a live audience and streaming. Online spectators can watch both Friday’s and Saturday’s finals via Onewheel’s YouTube channel. The event will later be rebroadcast on Fuel TV.
And, bonus: Beginning July 28, fans have a chance at winning $5,000 when they fill out and submit a championship bracket. Brackets will become available this Wednesday at Onewheel’s Race for the Rail page.
Live viewing of the event is a refreshing change from the forcibly underground nature of 2020’s Race for the Rail events. Until health authorities loosened COVID-19 restrictions earlier this summer, organizers of the Race for the Rail series restricted public access to race information, fearing that crowds would lead authorities to break up the off-road events.
Onewheel released information like race location, competitor names, and even race dates on an exclusive, need-to-know basis. GearJunkie covered one of those clandestine events last summer.
To learn more about this weekend’s Race for the Rail World Championship, check out the official race page, or get your butt out to the offseason Utah slopes and see the enduro dirt-board showdown for yourself.
Check out the vids below for a glimpse at some of the action you can expect to see at this year’s mega event.