News
Thursday , September 24th - The UIM-ABP Aquabike World Championship is making its grand return to racing in China for the 2026 season, with Shanghai welcoming the Championship back in the city’s northern Baoshan district after an absence of seven years from the country. Much has therefore changed since the last time Aquabike raced in China, with many of the fresh crop of riders set to race in the country for the first time in their Aquabike careers.
Aquabike first arrived in China in 2011 with the inaugural race taking place in Liuzhou, with the last Aquabike race held in China being the 2019 Grand Prix of Qingdao. That marked the penultimate race of the 2019 season, and saw race wins for some faces still familiar to today’s paddock. The now-legendary Freestyle master Rashid Al Mulla was then at the start of his racing dominance, and won both his Motos in Qingdao to complete the 2019 season with the maximum of the points available and handsomely secure his second Freestyle World Championship. So he returns to Shanghai with a Chinese race win already under his belt, but the personal challenge of claiming a win in the Chinese megacity for the first time. Al Mulla already competed there in the 2016 Grand Prix of Shanghai, but was pipped to the top spot by the dazzling display of multiple-time World Champion Rok Florjancic. With Florjancic now long-since retired, Al Mulla has the chance to go one step further than he did a decade ago in Shanghai, and win his first race there.
Similarly in Ski Ladies GP1, the retirement of a former World Champion has opened the way for this year’s set of riders to claim a first career win in Shanghai. Emma-Nellie Ortendahl won the last three Aquabike Grand Prix to be held in China, including the last one in Shanghai in 2016, dominating those three races and winning all of her Motos. Her recent retirement from Aquabike means a new victor is guaranteed, so the competition will be fierce among the likes of Jasmiin Ypraus and Jonna Borgstrom, both of whom have podium finishes to their name from the last race in China, and this season have the chance to go one further and claim the top spot. Meanwhile some of the category’s newest faces, like current European Champion Benedicte Drange, will be making their Chinese racing debuts, hoping to make their first race in the Dragon Kingdom one to remember.
Jeremy Perez will be returning to China with mixed memories of his last time racing in the country. Perez had a tough start to racing the last time he was in China, breaking down in both qualifying and the first Moto. But he did not allow his tricky start to discourage him, as he mounted a strong challenge in Moto 2 to come second, behind Hajime Isahai whose Moto win saw him make history, becoming the first Japanese rider to win a Moto in Runabout on the UIM-ABP tour. The points picked up in Moto 2 proved vital for Perez, who went on to win the 2019 Runabout World Championship by a margin of just ten points. With no Isahai to chase this time, Perez will be returning to China concentrating on defeating his main current rival, reigning World Champion Francois Medori, who last raced in China in 2015 in the Grand Prix of Liuzhou where he placed fourth overall
The last Aquabike races in China coincided with a period of utter dominance from Kevin Reiterer in Ski GP1. The Austrian arrived in China in 2019 having won the first two Grand Prix of that season, and continued his winning streak in Qingdao as he won all three of his Moto races. Those wins proved part of a legendary season for Reiterer in which he cruised to a Ski World Championship by winning all but one Motos that season, falling short of a perfect record by just one second-place finish that year. He similarly dominated the last time Aquabike raced in Shanghai, winning all the Motos in 2016. He faces far stronger competition on his return to China, as a new generation of riders head to Shanghai for the first time, including current European Champion Quinten Bossche who arrives in confident spirits having won every single Moto of this year’s European campaign.
Aquabike’s return to China is therefore guaranteed to see new riders claim race wins in those storied waters, as the latest generation of Aquabike riders head to the Dragon Kingdom for the first time. But alongside them are those carrying cherished memories of racing there, who will be fighting to create fresh fond memories of racing in China, and prove to today’s young riders that the Aquabike thrones are far from being vacated.