MTB Heat Check Power Rankings

Leogang World Cup Edition

Back in May, I had grand plans to do an updated MTB Heat Check Power Rankings. For the past few Heat Check installments, the goal was to rank the riders, come up with a theme and cleverly associate our MTB or cyclocross stars with elements of that theme. This plan, in the end, was my undoing. Coming up with a theme wasn’t too hard. After a quick brainstorm, we decided that a Kate-Courtney-motivational-saying-themed Heat Check would be the way to go. Assign a well-researched motivational quote to each rider, weave into the narrative how that inspirational nugget fits that particular rider’s essence, and churn out those rankings. Coming up with the idea? Easy as Sunday morning. Implementing it into a coherent narrative? The Downward Spiral. I stared at it each morning for about a week or so and eventually punted. I should’ve listened to Kate.

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“Promise yourself you’ll go just that little bit farther. More often than not when you get there, you’ll find you can keep moving 💪🏽✨”

As we prepare for another weekend of World Cup racing in Leogang, Austria, starting with today’s short track races, I thought it would be a good exercise to buckle down, go back to my unpublished rankings from May, and see how they hold up.

Let’s do this.

WOMEN:

1. Loana Lecomte

2. Haley Batten

3. Pauline Ferrand Prevot

4. Kate Courtney

5. Bec McConnell

6. Linda Indergand

7. Evie Richards

8. Anne Terpstra

9. Sina Frei

10. Jenny Rissveds

11. Mona Mitterwallner

Three weeks after coming up with this list, I’m still feeling pretty good about these rankings with a few notable changes.

Loana Lecomte: Since winning her second straight World Cup, Lolo Lecomte has secured a spot on the French Olympics team, signed with Adidas, hung out with Chef Jean Sulpice, and gave us no reason why she should not be considered the favorite coming into Leogang. She remains in the top spot.

Haley Batten: Like Lecomte, Batten secured her ticket to the Olympics with her podium finish at Nove Mesto. Since that time, she has been putting in the training miles in Santa Cruz, California, and comes into another sloppy World Cup weekend as a podium favorite.

Pauline Ferrand Prevot: PFP may be third on the list, but she may rise to the top after this weekend. Fully healed after her Nove Mesto short-track mishap, and with no more Olympic drama (real or perceived) to get in the way, I have a feeling Prevot is going to give Lecomte a run for her money this weekend and is my pick for the win.

Kate Courtney: Here’s the first real change to how the rankings picture looked in May. After a Nove Mesto race marred with crashes and mechanicals, Courtney dusted herself off and started to look ahead to the next round. However, her unbreakable mental game was undermined by her breakable wrist. After the pain suffered in the Nove Mesto race failed to subside, Courtney revealed at the end of May that she suffered a fractured ulna and would not race in Leogang. However, she’s at home training like a fiend, and there’s no reason to believe she won’t be back, stronger than ever, in Tokyo. On the bright side, she got a new bike from Scott, the Contessa Spark RC, and has enjoyed many post-training-ride tacos.

Bec McConnell: Following her Nove Mesto podium finish, McConnell planned on training in Spain and preparing for Leogang. But ballers got to ball. Peeping a muddy Spanish forecast the week after Nove Mesto, McConnell chucked the day’s training, strapped a number plate onto her bike, and won the Superprestigio MTB. As she put it, better than a two-hour training ride in the rain. She raced, again, last weekend, taking the win by over six minutes at Candelada. Will the extra racing be the key or a detriment for Leogang success?

Linda Indergand: After an impressive sixth-place finish in Nove Mesto and strong performances all year long, Indergand is poised for a breakout performance. She was hoping that would come at the Swiss National Championships at the end of May. But bad mechanical luck left her chasing the field from way back at the end of lap one, and she was never able to compete for the top step. On the plus side, Indergand earned a spot on the Swiss Olympic team, a huge accomplishment with many strong riders vying for a spot. So could this weekend be the XCO podium race for the eliminator world champ?

Evie Richards: Coming off of her best performance in an elite World Cup—a fifth-place finish at Nove Mesto—Richards cannot afford to let up. British Cycling announces who will make the Olympics squad on June 15. GB has one slot available for the women’s XCO race and three contenders: Richards, Annie Last, and Isla Short. From my hastily done research, the selection criteria are a bit murky, but for argument’s sake, let’s say that Leogang could determine who goes to Tokyo. Lots of marbles resting on this result.

Anne Terpstra: A top ten finish at Nove Mesto and a ticket to Tokyo has Terpstra’s stock rising. Keep an eye on her this weekend.

Sina Frei: Coming hot off a tenth place finish at the Tour de Suisse, Frei enters Leogang flying. She also scored a bronze medal at the Swiss MTB National Championships, proving the form is there for a big weekend. Being selected for the Swiss Olympics team means the pressure of a good result this weekend is gone, and that sets her up perfectly for a good result this weekend.

Jenny Rissveds: She looked strong in Albstadt but wasn’t feeling great in Nove Mesto and ended up abandoning the race. She comes into Leogang fresh off of a national championship win in the Eliminator, of all things, so maybe she’s primed for a short-track surprise. If nothing else, she looks like she’s having fun, and that could be her key to success.

Mona Mitterwallner: I know she’s not racing the elite category, but she’s putting in elite performances in the U23 races and deserves a shout-out in the power rankings. We won’t see the U23 World Cup races this weekend, but I’m going with the bold prediction that Mitterwallner takes the win.

Jolanda Neff: Not on our list in May but has earned a mention here. Neff won the Swiss Champs race, beating a strong field of contenders. After discussing with Zach, we are cautiously optimistic that Jolanda Neff is BACK.

MEN:

1. Tom Pidcock

2. Mathias Flückiger

3. Mathieu van der Poel

4. Victor Koretzky

5. Nino Schurter

6. Ondrej Cink

7. Anton Cooper

8. Jordan Sarrou

9. Alan Hatherly

10. Henrique Avancini

11. Vlad Dascalu

With the luxury of hindsight, this list from May doesn’t seem too far off, but there are definitely some events to consider that have shuffled who’s hot and who’s not.

Let’s get into it.

Tom Pidcock: In the “not” category is Pidcock. Picante’s temperature cooled down slightly after a harrowing run-in with a vehicle led to a destroyed road bike and a broken collarbone. However, that hasn’t slowed him down too much. He’s already doing pushups and is back on the bike not a week after the collision. But, despite his Terminator 2-esque healing capability, Pidcock will not be in Leogang, meaning the MTB specialists can breathe a sigh of relief. The big date for Pidcock, now, is June 15, when he finds out if all of the work he did to get a chance at the Olympics will pay off with a selection by British Cycling.

Mathias Flückiger: As of today, Fluecki would be in the top spot of the power rankings. He has been the all-around strongest rider in the first two rounds of the World Cup, and without Pidcock and MvdP mucking things up, he may run away from the field in Leogang. On May 30, Mathias dethroned Nino Schurter as Swiss National Champ, signaling a new pecking order in the Swiss camp.

Mathieu van der Poel: MvdP is skipping this round of the World Cup to continue ripping legs off the roadie set at the Tour de Suisse. He seems to have overcome the racing fatigue that plagued him in his MTB performances and could come into the Olympics flying.

Victor Koretzky: A career-making round at Albstadt followed by a race to forget at Nove Mesto makes it tough to know where Koretzky will finish this weekend. We tend to think that the mechanical-marred 24th place finish at Nove Mesto was the aberration and expect him to be fighting at the front at Leogang. With his Olympics spot secured, he’s another racer who can concentrate solely on the World Cup without the pressure of a selection weighing him down.

Nino Schurter: Off the World Cup podium for the first time in years and a second-place finish at Swiss Nationals, has alarm bells sounding for the once unbeatable champ. But he assures us his form is coming round, and there’s no reason to doubt it. He even mixed it up on the road and bumped elbows with the roadies. This is all to say that our guy didn’t get to be the most dominant MTB racer ever without an unmatched competitive drive, and we are going to see that in full effect at Leogang. Watch for the attacks from the gun and Nino driving the pace the entire race. The next-gen better bring their A-game.

Ondrej Cink: The Czech Dangler has impressed this season. The question is whether he will be able to carry over that home-race boost he experienced at Nove Mesto to the slopes of Leogang. He’s been mixing some racing with the training and won in Walbrzych, Poland, last weekend.

Anton Cooper: The now-mulletless Kiwi has been working hard to regain that 2018 form that had him fighting for podium spots every week. An eighth place at Nove Mesto and flashes of good form at Albstadt have us optimistic that a return to the top of the sport is possible for Coop.

Jordan Sarrou: The curse of the rainbow jersey is not something we have witnessed in men’s XCO mountain biking for some time. Nino wore the jersey. Nino won the races. With Sarrou now donning the rainbow stripes, the talk of the curse started seeping into the discourse. An 11th place finish at Albstadt was a bit farther back than expected for the new World Champ. But a fifth-place finish at Nove Mesto instilled some confidence that Sarrou remains a contender. A return to the track where he won the world championship has to be the biggest confidence booster of all. Without the muddy slog we saw in 2020, will Sarrou be able to stay undefeated in Leogang?

Alan Hatherly: A sixth-place finish at Nove Mesto was a great result for the South African champ. After his 47th place finish at Worlds last year, Hatherly said he has some unfinished business with this track. An improvement on that result should be easy. A top 5 finish would be huge.

Henrique Avancini: There hasn’t been much good news to report for Avancini this season. Disappointing results have marred his 2021 campaign, and travel restrictions are keeping him from competing in Leogang.

Vlad Dascalu: Vladi Dadi, he likes to party. When we compiled our list in May, Dascalu had just secured Tom Pidcock, or more accurately, Great Britain, a spot in the Olympics. For this reason, we thought it would be great to include Vlad in the power rankings. That storyline is still fascinating, but it may be less impactful depending on Pidcock’s condition come Olympics time. Regardless of why, we’re still bullish on Dascalu and expect big things from him in Leogang.

So there you have it. The movers and the shakers from the XCO set as we get ready for the Leogang World Cup weekend. The action kicks off today with the short-track races. Available for free on Red Bull TV, the short track racing starts at 11:20 a.m. ET. The weekend also includes a downhill World Cup on Saturday, which should be worth your time to take in, and the XC races on Sunday.