UCI BMX World Championships bring Economic Impact to Rock Hill
715 views · Published 29 August 2017 · 7:40 · Indexed 20 October 2026
Channel: South Carolina ETV · 2017 · Education
Rock hill, South Carolina, has a growing sports tourism industry designed to bring significant economic impact to the area. About seven years ago, the city of Rock Hill started developing the Riverwalk community, with one of its major attractions being the BMX Supercross track. And, this past July, the city of Rock Hill hosted the UCI BMX World Challenge and World Championships. Mayor Echols explains, “One of the things that we have said all along about Sports Tourism is that it provides a tremendous economic impact. We have measured over the last ten years, well over a hundred and 50 million dollars of economic impact from our sports tourism, that sounds like good business to me. This event by itself will generate approximately $13 million in economic impact over a 10-day period. You got 20,000 expected visitors from around the world, here over a ten day period so when you think of having this kind of event…certainly it’s a bicycle event, and it’s a major world championship, but it’s much, much more than that when you think about an economic impact." John Taylor, the Director of Parks, Recreation and Tourism adds on to that, saying “The restaurants are full, the hotels are full, so we know people are sleeping and eating in our area, so that’s great. It’s also given the community that sense of pride that we want to show the world what rock hill is all about and we’re very proud of that.” An event of this magnitude would not have been possible if it weren’t for the City of Rock Hill’s attention to detail and forward thinking. John Taylor explains, “When it came to the cycling facilities, we went to UCI, we went to USA Cycling and said ‘help us create something so we will be able to draw an event like this’ and as you can see that’s been successful." He comments that, “A lot of people have moved here to train because of the facilities we have.” Anna Beynon, UCI BMX World Championships Competitor, says she and her family decided to move to the Rock Hill area when the track was first announced. She explains that , “we found of they were gonna get Worlds this year, which made us really, really excited that we were going to move here and have this as our home track for Worlds.” She compliments the track, saying “It’s so awesome to have such a good track to train on, it kind of spoils me because I’ll go to other tracks that aren’t as good and I’ll be disappointed but it’s so awesome to have such a good facility that’s open so many days of the week to train on.”
