The highly anticipated three-day UCI Cincinnati International Cyclocross Festival begins this afternoon with the Darkhorse Cyclo-Stampede in Burlington Kentucky, just west of the Cincinnati airport. In a last minute development, Trek/VW’s mountain bike superstar Jeremiah Bishop has entered all three events, joining over 80 Elite Men and Women competing for the UCI points and hundreds more in the amateur categories.

Bishop is probably the most versatile off-road cyclist in North America. A former gold-medalist in the Olympic-distance mountain biking discipline at the Pan Am Games, Bishop is the 2008 United States Mountain Bike National Champion in both the Marathon and Short Track disciplines – the equivalent of winning major stage races and kilometer track time trials in the same year. He is coming off his first cyclocross win of the year at last Saturday at the BikeReg.com MABRAcross “Breast Cancer Awareness Cyclocross Challenge” in Hagerstown Maryland.

The Trek/VW star will be against tough competition including former Short Track National Champion Barry Wicks, who won every race in Cincinnati last year when it was a two-day event. Consecutive two-time defending Danish National Champion Joachim Parbo isn’t in the United States for a vacation, and wants to take home maximum UCI points. Brent Prenzlow is coming off his first win in California this year. Weston Schempf is leading the BikeReg.com MABRAcross standings after out-dueling Jeremiah Bishop (for the second consecutive year) at the Ed Sander Memorial, and he also currently sits second in the MAC Powered by SRAM points table. Young guys like World Silver medalist Danny Summerhill will be competing against grizzled veterans like Steve Tilford. And they all will have to watch for defending Zipp OVCX Tour Champion Ryan Gamm. Sadly, three-time Swiss Champ Yves Corminbeouf has had to cut short his comeback from a stroke and leukemia after being admitted to the hospital on Monday night. Though he has been released and plans to attend the festival as a spectator, Corminbeouf’s Swiss doctors have advised him not to race until they can run additional tests when he returns home.

On the women’s side, Laura Van Gilder will continue her dream rookie season of cyclocross in Cincinnati. Another late entry, Van Gilder is currently undefeated in the MAC Powered by SRAM series. The long-time road superstar will take on a star-studded Women’s field including Katie Compton, Georgia Gould, Dee Dee Winfield, Catherine Walberg and others. The Saturday and Sunday races of the Cincinnati International Cyclocross Festival are paying the top women equal prize money to the top five men according to the “Gould Formula”. As Sunday’s Bio-Wheels / United Dairy Farmers Harbin Park International is a C1 event, that makes it one of the richest women’s ‘cross races in the World this year.

The Cincinnati International Cyclocross Festival is three days of UCI-sanctioned International Cyclocross around the Cincinnati, Ohio, Metropolitan Area, and part of the 2008 Zipp OVCX Cyclocross Tour. For more information see http://cincinnatiuci3.blogspot.com/.