For the 2020 World Championships, we distinguish the following vehicle classes:

We may add additional classes if someone takes the initiative and brings along at least a handful of participants in that class.

When you register, you specify your bike and the class that you want to participate in. Typically you choose the class that best matches your vehicle, but in principle you may also choose a more generic class. The FF class serves as an open class: there are no restrictions. Except in case of irreparable damage, switching bikes between races is not allowed.
For the Bike Courier race these rules do not apply, you can use any bike and there are no classes.

In addition to the above, there will be one prize for best junior and one for best senior, defined as:
jr: junior, 15 and below
sr: senior, 55 and up

In the long text below you find our motivation for this restricted set of classes.

The classes Fully, Partly and Unfaired (FF, PF, UF) are well established and the distinction seems to work reasonably well. See the WRRA website for the definition of these classes. At recent editions of Cycle Vision we have seen that the results in the PF/UF classes are much more dependent on rider than bike, so we tend to take them together. At the World Championships however we expect some serious contenders in both the UF and PF categories, so we will separate them.

In the FF class, velomobiles dominate because of their street-worthiness. There are not enough two-wheeled FF bikes participating to make a class distinction. In the UF class, bikes dominate and tend to be faster than trikes. But trikes have a dedicated fan base, and at the moment recumbent dealers are selling more trikes than bikes. So we see a motivation for having a UF-trike class.

The number of women participating is 10-15%. The consequence of this is that the number of participants in the four classes that were defined above is very low. It seems a reasonable requirement to have at least 5 participants to award a 1st 2nd and 3rd prize. We could make the decision about this one month ahead of the event, based on registrations. From past experience, we expect there will be a PF/UF-female class and a FF-female class.

Two decisions here, the age limits and the vehicle classes.
For juniority: 15 and below.
For seniority: 55 and up.
We tend to not have strict age limits on the lower end: we simply expect parents to not put their children in danger. A 12 year old is not built to sustain a 6 hour race, but doing the first round(s) of the elimination race can be fitting. There will only be a prize/prizes in age categories in the overall ranking.

There are too few tandems to make a separate category. Tandems are more than welcome, and are treated as if the riders both ride their own bike in the appropriate class.

Rowing bikes, scooterbikes, handbikes, elliptigo's, all are welcome to join our event. If someone wants to organize a subcompetition for any of these groups, please contact us.
Edit: We will have a group of HF-bikers participate in the event. They use a simultaneous hand and foot rotating motion drive.

In the past we have sometimes worked with an open class. In this class, everything is free, including choosing the best bike for each individual race. We do not consider this option for this event.

We will not consider deep nested classes like best female junior unfaired trike. The deepest level is one person and one vehicle characteristic. But even with this limitation, the total number of prizes that we award is of the same order of magnitude as the number of participants. Reserve some space in your vehicle if you plan to win a lot of prizes.