Folks, World Cup XCO Mountain Biking ... is BACK
The 2022 UCI XCO World Cup kicks off in Petropolis, Brazil, this weekend
When we last left the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup scene at West Virginia’s Snowshoe Resort in September, Evie Richards was busy winning her first World Cup race in her new rainbow stripes, and American Christopher Blevins was completing his epic win in front of the home-country fans.
The World Cup returns this weekend, again in the Western Hemisphere, but this time a bit farther south. Okay, a lot farther south. Like in the Southern Hemisphere.
The first of the nine-race 2022 series takes place in Petropolis, Brazil, this weekend. Petropolis is located just north of Rio de Janeiro and is the home of the São José Bike Club. Not surprisingly given the location, everyone’s favorite gold-wearing Brazilian Henrique Avancini helped work to make the event a reality for the local organizers.
The Petropolis World Cup is the first in the Southern Hemisphere since Santa Catarina, Brazil, in 2005, but there have been other races that have escaped the Europe-North America nexus the series typically sticks to. In 2018, the series opener was in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in 2016 it was in Cairns, Australia, and in 2014 there were races in both Pietermaritzburg, South Africa and Cairns, to name a few in the past 10 years.
This post is mainly intended to remind folks that mountain bike racing is BACK, but since we’re here, we’ll also take a look at the rest of the calendar, some team changes, and of course, storylines.
2022 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup
After the COVID-shortened two-race 2020 World Cup and last year’s somewhat abbreviated schedule, it appears Flanders Classics has secretly infiltrated the mountain bike scene as well, with the series sporting a full nine races. I looked back at the schedules from recent years, and this may be the first-ever nine-race World Cup series. Provided, obviously, that all the races take place.
The full schedule is as follows:
The World Championships are the weekend of August 27-28 in Les Gets, France.
The good news from the broadcast perspective is the World Cup races are back on Red Bull TV for free dollars all season long. The potentially bad news is Discovery Sports is taking over the promotion of the series for the next 8 years from 2023 to 2030. There has not been word about what the broadcast situation will be beginning next year, but chances are high it will not be as readily available, if not as high quality, as the Red Bull broadcasts have been.
Racing starts Friday (today!) with the short track races beginning at 3:00pm EDT, and the Cross Country races are Sunday at 10:00am EDT for the Elite Women and 1:30pm EDT for the Elite Men.
You can tune in all season at redbull.tv.
New Teams!
Like any sport, team changes are probably the most interesting part of the mountain bike offseason. However, as we have lamented on the cyclocross side, the changes often come without the drama seen in other sports such as soccer, basketball, and football. Mountain bike racing seems to share in that spirit, with riders quietly announcing new teams or teasing embargoed team announcements for days or even weeks. We can still dream, of course.
Probably the two hottest riders on the offseason market were two of the youngest in Loana Lecomte of France and Mona Mitterwallner of Austria.
Lecomte raced for Massi bikes last season while utterly dominating the Elite Women’s field in the first four races before finishing a disappointing 6th at the Olympics—at least disappointing according to the standard she set in dropping the rest of the Elite Women’s field at each of the first four races. She then missed the World Championships due to illness, which left folks wondering what could have been after her amazing start to the season.
Since Massi was a smaller team, there was a sense Lecomte would land with one of the big teams soon enough. That came to fruition during the winter when the new Canyon CLLCTV team was announced with Lecomte as its star rider.
The other young rider who did her own dominating last season was Mona Mitterwallner of Austria. Mitterwallner won each of the U23 Women’s races, many in dominating fashion, and also won the U23 Women’s World Championships. The 20-year-old raced for the Trek | Vaude team last season, but after her run of dominance, the big players came calling.
Mitterwallner ended up signing with Cannondale Factory Racing during the offseason. Folks who missed seeing her race last year since the U23 races were not broadcast will not have to worry as Mitterwallner will be joined by fellow U23 riders Laura Stigger and Blanka Vas in racing the Elites this season.
One move of note on the Elite Men’s side is the elevation of Romanian Vlad Dascalu to the Trek Factory Racing team. When the news was announced, the Pidders-stans in Pidderstan (Great Britain) no doubt celebrated after Dascalu’s good ride at World Cup Nove Mesto last spring gave Great Britain and Pidcock a spot in the Olympics. And we all know how that turned out.
A lot of the team movement this offseason is on the domestic front.
Both Haley Batten and Christopher Blevins had breakout seasons last year for Trinity Racing last year, and both were justly rewarded to Specialized Factory Racing. Batten finished 3rd at Albstadt and 2nd at Nove Mesto to earn a spot on Team USA for the Tokyo Olympics. The then-22-year-old had a strong ride in Tokyo, finishing 9th in her first Olympics.
Blevins, well, we did our part to hype his one cyclocross weekend last fall, so you probably know his story. Blevins won the first-ever Short Track World Championships and then as an encore performance, he became the first American male to win a World Cup in forever when he won the season-ending Snowshoe World Cup. Blevins was basically the youngest Elite rider in the World Cup field last year, so many eyes will be on him to see if he can build on his success from last year.
Friend of the Bulletin and Canadian mountain bike National Champion Jenn Jackson has a new team, moving from Norco to the Canyon MTB Racing team run by fellow Canadian Emily Batty.
Another big move on the domestic front is Riley Amos’ elevation to the Trek Factory Racing team, making him the first American male to race for Trek’s premier team. Last year as a U23 racer, Amos finished 2nd at Nove Mesto and won the Leogang and Les Gets World Cups.
For more team coverage, Pinkbike has a nice rundown of all the UCI mountain bike teams for the coming season.
Storylines!
Elite Women
The Bulletin is all about those storylines, and the coming season has plenty on offer.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Jolanda Neff suffered a catastrophic crash at Pisgah Forest in North Carolina and was not really herself in the fall of 2020 and most of 2021. She did the Olympics, thus proving she was officially BACK, but early returns from the 2022 season suggest she might be BACK (bigger letters) this year.
Neff has won two races already this season, including a win in last Sunday’s race at Petropolis. She didn’t just win that race, however, she won by SIX MINUTES against the likes of, IDK, Evie Richards, Kate Courtney, Sina Frei, and others. It’s just one muddy race, but that time gap is still quite impressive.
Neff and the rest of the field face a tough task in taking on the two young stars Lecomte and Mitterwallner. Lecomte faded at the end of last season, but it is hard to look past the utter dominance in her four wins last season. Her closest win was 51 seconds, and she won the four races by an average of 1:17.
One bummer of Lecomte’s illness before Worlds is she was slated to face off against Mitterwallner in the U23 Championship race. Never fear though because after winning all six World Cup races last season, Mitterwallner is stepping up to the Elites this year at just age 20. Will she be able to pull off what Lecomte did last season? We will get our first look on Sunday.
Speaking of riders on BACK Watch, this season is a massive one for Kate Courtney. After winning Worlds in 2018 and then the World Cup overall in 2019, Courtney had a disappointing 2020 campaign, suffered a broken hand at Nove Mesto, and then finished a disappointing 15th at the Olympics. If anyone is poised for a return to form, it is Sparkle Watts.
Before we leave the Elite Women, it’s probably wise to not forget the reigning World Champion. Evie Richards has been on the rise since the start of the short 2020 season, and she put everything together at the World Championships in Val di Sole to win the Elite Worlds jersey in just her second year as an Elite. Richards has already proven she can win the big one, so this year it’s kind of like, what will she do for an encore?
One other rider of note for the cyclocross fans is Maghalie Rochette is going to be racing the World Cup circuit this summer. Rochette raced mountain bikes for the Clif Pro Team for several years before starting her CX Fever cyclocross program in 2018. She returns to her roots on the mountain bike starting on Sunday in Petropolis.
Elite Men
Last summer, the big story on the mountain bike scene was Tom Pidcock (you may have heard he was born to ride a mountain bike, after all). Pidcock passed like a million dudes en route to finishing 5th at Albstadt and then came back and dominated at Nove Mesto to get his first Elite Mountain Bike win. He then headed to Tokyo and casually won an Olympic gold. Pretty good season for a rider who is also now the current Cyclocross World Champion. Pidcock is busy on the road right now, but even with his new contract with Ineos, his multi-discipline racing seems likely to continue for the next few years.
Despite Pidcock being all the rage, when everything settled in Val di Sole, Nino Schurter was again the World Champion. After a narrow 2nd behind Victor Koretzky at Albstadt, Schurter struggled in his chase of breaking the all-time World Cup win record. However, he took a swig of the fountain of youth at Worlds and outdueled Mathias Fluckiger with an epic pass just a handful of turns before the finish.
The talk of the season is no doubt going to be Schurter’s quest to break the tie with Absalon and get his 33rd career World Cup win.
Speaking of Flucki, can our guy get a break this year? After winning the World Cup overall, including snagging wins at Leogang and Les Gets, Fluckiger got Pidcock’d at the Olympics, finishing 2nd there, and then was seemingly on his way to a win at Worlds before getting Schurter’d at the last moment, again finishing in 2nd.
Fluckiger has spent his career in the shadow of Schurter’s historic greatness, and with the GOAT off his game last year, it seemed 2021 was the 33-year-old’s shot to get a World Championship. Father Time, they say, stands undefeated, so this season may be one of Fluckiger’s last shots at getting a Worlds win.
Pidcock and Van der Poel are obviously busy right now and not racing in Brazil, but both men are expected to factor into the World Cup this season. Pidcock is flying high after last season, while Van der Poel enters with a bit of a chip on his shoulder after the Great Tokyo Ramp Debacle. With Van der Poel for sure doing the Tour and Pidcock likely to be part of the Ineos team, it remains to be seen how much mountain biking the duo will be doing.
Pidders and MvdP are not the only two riders transitioning to the road. Young Dutch rider Milan (Don’t Call Me Darth) Vader signed with Jumbo-Visma to do a mix of mountain biking and road racing, but one of the biggest shocks of the offseason is the current 4th-place rider in the UCI standings, Victor Koretzky of France, signed with the B&B Hotels p/b KTM team and plans on racing on the road this summer.
When the news was announced back in September there were some questions about Koretzky’s contract with KTM that went through the end of this year, but he is very much racing on the road with his new team, including starting at Tour of Flanders and the upcoming Amstel Gold Race.
We already mentioned Riley Amos as a young Western Hemisphere-er to keep an eye on, and another is Chile’s Martin Vidaurre. The 22-year-old won the U23 World Cups at Lenzerheide and Snowshoe and won the U23 World Championships. He also won Sunday’s race at Petropolis by over a minute against the likes of the Czangler, Ondrej Cink, former world champ Jordan Sarrou, Vlad Dascalu, and Maxime Marotte. Like Amos, he has opted to race U23 again this season.
There are certainly plenty more storylines to go around, but with the short track race starting here shortly this Friday afternoon, we will leave it there for now.
Stoked to see Mt. Saint Anne back and Snowshoe in July this year. Means no conflict with early CX season (it was same weekend as GoCross in ‘21) so already planning a trip 😜