Now it's just about time to get your plans ready for spring, as the individual registrations for the competitions at the iXS Dirt Masters Festival 2024 will open in the next few days.

Only about two months to go until the highlight of the season. More than 1,700 active athletes will once again be drawn to Winterberg in North Rhine-Westphalia, where the iXS Dirt Masters will be celebrated from May 17 to 20. This spectacular mountain bike festival will be held in the Hochsauerland district for the 17th time and will provide endless gravity action.

But if you want to be part of it all and not just marvel open-mouthed at the athletes next to the competition venues, you should get active now. The various registrations open today, and in some cases you have to be faster than on the race track, because the starting places are just as coveted as the podium places.

Registration for the Enduro theme opens today, Thursday. There will be three different formats as part of the festival. The race with the most participants will be the ORBEA Enduro Challenge, which will build on its success after its debut last year. The Rookies Enduro Race, in which young riders will be sent out in accompanied groups of 20 on a course with three special stages, was similarly well received. These will each have to be completed twice, with the best run being included in the overall ranking. And then there is another novelty, because for the first time the BDR will be awarding the German championship titles as part of the ORBEA Wild Ride, an E-Enduro race with specially adapted stages.

On Friday, registrations for the VPACE Kids Cup will begin, which was booked out pretty quickly last year and ended up with a huge waiting list. The contingent of participants will be slightly higher this time, but it will definitely be reached quickly. You can also register for the VPACE Rookies Jam. In this best trick contest for up-and-coming athletes, a hill with an approximate width of 6 m will be the venue for a session in the slopestyle course area, where participants will work together on their trick repertoire before presenting their skills to the audience. And the third registration opens for the newly launched Rip the Hip contest. The opener on Friday evening will be the first big public event in the slopestyle area. Under the eyes of thousands of spectators, the athletes will take off from the starting tower to perform their best tricks on the specially converted hip. In addition to some of the FMB athletes, lesser-known talents will also enchant the audience.

On Monday, things really get down to business. Only less than 200 starting places are available to perform at the PROPAIN Rookies Cup on the Friday of the festival. Experience in recent years has shown that these places are the most coveted and you shouldn't think twice about entering the Racement profile.

The registration process for the iXS Downhill Cup on Tuesday could be similarly stressful, although the 500 starting places will certainly take a little longer to sell out. But here, too, you can be sure that nothing will be available after a few days at the latest. At this point, we would also like to draw your attention to the possibility of booking the paddock, as this space is also limited and will eventually be as full as a campsite on Timmendorfer Strand in midsummer.

If you want to avoid the registration stress of the two downhill races and already know that you want to ride the whole series, you can still use the series registration until the Winterberg registration opens.