Gate bashers looking to earn the stars and stripes in four-cross racing, listen up: USA Cycling will hold the 2008 national championships in the discipline at New Mexico’s Chile Challenge, held May 26 at Angel Fire resort.

The move comes a year after four-cross — a UCI-recognized event in mountain biking — was absent from USA Cycling’s regular one-day national mountain-bike championships, held at Mount Snow, Vermont. USA Cycling instead awarded stars-and-stripes jerseys in the discipline of dual slalom last year. That move came after Mount Snow allowed promoters to build only a dual slalom course on its lower slopes, insisting that a four-cross course would require too much construction.

Angel Fire resort still owns a sizable four-cross course leftover from 2005, when the resort hosted a stop on the UCI world Cup. The national championships race will be open to American riders only. Four-cross national titles will be awarded to elite men's and women's fields only.

The Chile Challenge is part of the Mountain States Cup.

USA Cycling will hold its July 16-20 National Mountain Bike Championships in Mount Snow, Vermont. That event will name national champions in cross-country, downhill and dual slalom.