On Saturday, the first of the six races that make up Mazda's Lifetime Grand Prix will get underway. The season opener is the Sea Otter Classic 80K Fuego, a mountain bike cross-country race in Monterey, California.

FloSports has been selected as the broadcast partner for the series and will stream two days of the Sea Otter cross-country mountain bike race; the FloBikes channel will broadcast all six Grand Prix events live and provide subscribers worldwide with on-demand content.

The women's field includes cyclocross racer Rebecca Fahringer (Kona Maxxis Shimano), mountain biker Casey Armstrong (Liv Factory Team), two-time time trial world champion Amber Neben, Canadian Top cross country racer Haley Hunter Smith (Maxxis Factory Racing) will also be competing. On the men's side, gravel specialists Peter Stetina, Colin Strickland, and Lawrence Ten Dam, as well as US Marathon Mountain Bike National Champion Russell Finsterwald and Individual Pursuit World Champion Ashton Lambie will be at the start line.

"Stop number one of the Lifetime Grand Prix, a 50-mile mountain bike race, 80 kilometers, two laps around a big course. It's like old school mountain biking, not a punchy, short course with big loops. It will be an endurance-based race," Stetina said in an interview with FloBikes. 'Fitness takes precedence over technical ability. It's a true mountain bike race."

The $250,000 prize money will be split evenly between the top 10 finishers in each of the women's and men's categories based on points accumulated during the year. The competition is by invitation only, and 60 riders must compete in five of the six events to be eligible for the final prize money. The six events, three mountain bike and three gravel, are all existing competitions with a pedigree of extreme distances, high altitude, and difficult terrain.

The Fuego 80K XC will consist of two counterclockwise laps of a 40-km course that includes sandy climbs and flowing singletrack with an elevation gain of 1,737 meters. Course inspection and practice will take place on Friday morning, with the race starting at 8:00 am PDT on Saturday morning.

"We are proud to be the broadcast home of Life Time's first Grand Prix series and look forward to accelerating the growth of cycling in the United States," Ryan Fenton, Director of Global Rights and Acquisition for FloSports said.

"Our partnership with LifeTime reinforces our commitment to serving the cycling community with premium coverage of thrilling events by promoting the incredible participants who compete.

Founded in 2006, FloSports is a subscription video streaming service specializing in live and on-demand access to more than 20 sports categories in the United States and abroad. In cycling, the company offers live streaming of World Tour races such as Paris-Nice, Paris-Roubaix, Flèche Wallonne, and Liège-Bastogne, as well as women's World Tour races such as La Course at the Tour de France and the Madrid Challenge at La Vuelta. It recently announced a long-term partnership with the UCI, adding the Flanders Classic and the Fayetteville cyclo-cross championships to its program.