You Should Probably Watch the XCO Mountain Bike World Cups This Summer
I mean, you don't have to, but it's good racing and the races are live-streamed for free ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
One time at a cyclocross practice in Madison, I got into a discussion with two of the local legends about whether or not racing mountain bikes is good for preparing for cyclocross season. One said, Of course! It helps with bike handling and getting in good efforts during the summer. The other said, No way! The fat tires and cornering technique are nothing like cyclocross.
We left that conversation without a conclusion. But you know what is great for preparing to watch cyclocross racing? Watching World Cup XCO Mountain Biking!
The 2021 Mercedes Benz (do they have a sponsor, or do they have a sponsor?) UCI XCO World Cup starts this weekend in Albstadt, Germany. This year the biggest mountain bike series in the world features six rounds, a break for the Tokyo Olympics, and the World Championships in Val di Sole, Italy at the end of August. The series has some North American flavor, wrapping up at Snowshoe in West Virginia in September.
Perhaps the best part of the XCO World Cups is they are all broadcast live for free dollars at redbull.tv. Over the years, the courses have been optimized for television broadcasts, and the race coverage is always top-notch.
Perhaps the other best part of the XCO World Cups? The short track race held on Friday of every race weekend.
Short track mountain biking—IDK, think cyclocross but with fat tires and squish—has been around forever, but a few years ago, the UCI added the short track race for determining the first two rows of call-ups for the main event on Sunday. The top 40 riders in each Elite field get an invite to the short track race, and the top 16 get to start on those coveted first two rows.
The short track races have been a big positive for fans—I mean, who doesn’t want BIKE RACING available to distract them at the end of a summer work week—and a really big positive for fans of Mathieu van der Poel. I heard on a video I recently watched that he has won 10 World Cup short track races, and with the Dutch wunderkind gearing up for Tokyo, he seems like a good bet for the three rounds of the World Cup leading up to the Olympics.
I actually have no idea how many Bulletin readers are into mountain bike racing, so if this breezy intro feels a bit simplistic, I apologize! Formalities aside, we will get to the meat of this post, including how to watch, whom to watch (as a bike racing fan), and why to watch (as a cyclocross fan). MvdP spoiler alert, the latter two of those might overlap!
How to Watch
Streams of both the short track and XCO races are available at redbull.tv. The short track races typically take place on Friday of each race weekend and then the XCO races are on Sunday. There are races for Junior Women and Men and U23 Women and Men on Saturday, and then the two XCO races are on Sunday.
You know what else is great about the short track races? They typically take place in the evening Europe time, which is prime, middle of the day slacking at work time in North America.
This weekend’s Women’s short track race takes place at 11:30 am EDT and the Men’s race is at 12:15 pm EDT. My colleague Bill usually does nice work live-tweeting the short track races, so if you don’t already follow him, look up @cxhairs for the bonus Bulletin content you didn’t know you were getting.
The XCO races on Sunday are not as North American friendly, making the on-demand availability huge for non-morning people like, IDK, myself. The Women’s race starts at 5:20 a.m. EDT, and the Men’s race is at 8:35 a.m EDT.
Whom to Watch
Elite Women
In recent years, there has been a good argument to be made that cyclocross fan or not, the Elite Women’s race was the race to watch at the XCO World Cups. Jolanda “Sendy Poof” Neff of Switzerland was at the top of her game. When she returned from iliac artery fibrosis surgery, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot was quickly and decidedly BACK. American sensation Kate Courtney used her Sparkle Watts to win the World Championships in 2018 and then won 3 of the first 4 World Cup races during the 2019 season.
Then, well, 2020.
While the Spring Classics became the Fall Classics on the road, the mountain bike World Cup series also salvaged a “series,” if you want to call it that. The entirety of the World Cup series was a race on Thursday, October 1 at Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, a race on Sunday, October 4 in Nove Mesto, and then the World Championships a week later in Austria.
Ferrand-Prevot and Neff had some nice battles at the end of the 2019 mountain bike season, but Neff was still recovering from a serious crash at Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina suffered at the beginning of the pandemic, and she was not the same Sendy Poof we have come to know and love. Courtney was also not up to the same level she rode at the previous season and took a DNF at Worlds.
The result was a relatively dominant campaign for PFP. Ferrand-Prevot won the second Nove Mesto World Cup and then dominated at Leogang Worlds on a challenging course that definitely put the “mountain” in mountain biking to win her third mountain biking rainbow jersey.
The short calendar, did, however, mark the birth of a new French mountain biking star. U23 rider Loana Lecomte wasn’t a total nobody—she podiumed in the U23 Women’s race at Snowshoe in 2019—but she kind of shocked the mountain bike world when she defeated Dutchwoman Anne Terpstra and Ferrand-Prevot to win the first World Cup in Nove Mesto. She then went on to podium at Nove Mesto Redux and win the U23 Women’s World Championship a week later in Austria. Lecomte is still just 21 years old, so uh, yeah.
Other riders to watch include young Swiss rider Sina Frei, who was a star at the U23 level and finished 4th at 2020 Worlds, Australia’s Rebecca McConnell, who finished 3rd at Worlds, and Dutchwoman Anne Terpstra, who finished second at the 2 World Cups in 2020.
Elite Men
There is a saying in American cycling, I think it goes “Death, Taxes, Is there a live stream?” The Swiss version of that saying is “Chocolate, Everything’s Expensive, Nino Schurter in the Rainbow Stripes.”
Schurter is the Marianne Vos of mountain biking, winning 8 World Championships from 2009 through 2019. During that time, Schurter also won 7 World Cup overalls and turned in a perfect World Cup campaign in 2017. In short, it was Nino versus the Field.
However, Schurter turned 34 last year, and like a lot of athletes, the pandemic threw him off his game and finally showed some cracks in his (very neutral) armor. Schurter managed just one podium finish in a World Cup and finished a very un-Nino-like 9th at the World Championships in Austria. With Schurter nearing the tail end of his career, the door has opened for other riders to finally breakthrough.
There are a number of men’s riders who have raced in Schurter’s shadow for years who are hoping to take advantage of their opportunities in the coming years. France’s Jordan Sarrou, a long-time pro, won the World Championships last fall. Another Swiss rider in Mathias Fluckiger finished 2nd the last two world championships. Brazil’s Henrique Avancini has broken through in recent years, finishing 3rd and 1st in the last two World Cup overalls.
Last season’s uncertainty and brief World Cup calendar also facilitated some impressive rides by young talent. 24-year-old Simon Andreasson of Denmark won the first World Cup race, and Milan Vader of the Netherlands finished 2nd and 3rd in the two World Cups.
Of course, all of this casually elides the return of one Mathieu van der Poel to the mountain bike circuit. Fresh off cyclocross season off the Spring Classics, Van der Poel has set his sights on the Olympics in Tokyo on the mountain bike, and he will be starting his first mountain bike race since 2019 this weekend.
After turning heads in 2017 with his memorable battle against Nino Schurter at Nove Mesto as an “unknown,” Van der Poel quickly made his name known on the dirt scene. He finished 3rd at Worlds in 2018 and then won 3 races and finished 2nd in the World Cup overall despite skipping the last race in 2019. And not surprisingly, Van der Poel is a force in the short track races, winning 10 of them thus far in his career.
Van der Poel has already ruined cyclocross, and he is doing his best to ruin road racing. This summer now provides him with a golden opportunity to ruin mountain biking as well
Why to Watch (As a Cyclocross Fan)
Given cyclocross is a “cross” of road and off-road skills (or whatever), it only makes sense that there would be a number of cyclocross racers to watch in the XCO World Cups. While there are more women ‘crossers who spend their summers on the fat, knobby tires, what the men lack in numbers they make up for in sheer star power this year.
However, before we get to the Elites, we need to peep one of the U23 races.
U23 Women
Check out these starters: Kata Blanka Vas, Puck Pieterse, Fem van Empel, Anna Kay. It’s like a regular U23 cyclocross World Championships!
In this case, the rider starting from the best spot is Vas. Vas finished second at the World Championships last season behind Lacompte and will be starting on the 2nd row. No doubt she will be Hungary to continue her multi-discipline success and make a good impression for her new World Tour team SD Worx. The other trio are seeded 56 through 63, so they will have some work to do to get up into the conversation. While the U23 races are not broadcast, this is definitely a race the Bulletin will have its collective eyes on.
Another rider worth noting in the U23 Women’s race is Austrian Mona Mittenwallner. Last weekend at the Swiss Cup in Leukerbad, the 19-year-old casually beat Kate Courtney (1 Rainbow Jersey), Pauline Ferrand-Prevot (3 Rainbow Jerseys), and Jolanda Neff (1 Rainbow Jersey). Yeah. She faces a tough task on Sunday with the 53rd call-up, but she is another young name worth getting acquainted with.
Elite Men
Van der Poel is coming into the Men’s race as a rider expected to be in the mix, amd his mini-me Tom “Pidders” Pidcock also comes into the race with more of a hype train than when Van der Poel broke onto the mountain biking scene. Last fall, Pidcock decided to see what the whole mountain biking thing was all about and casually won both World Cups and the World Championships. NBD. After a successful Classics campaign, Pidcock raced at Leukerbad and casually beat the 2020 Worlds bronze medalist by over 3 minutes.
Back in 2017, Van der Poel was just a cyclocross racer, so when he went from a 90+ call-up position to 8th at Albstadt, no one really noticed. And after he went toe-to-toe with Schurter the next weekend at Nove Mesto, he was still a bit more of a curiosity.
All of this is to say, one, Pidcock will not have that luxury this weekend of anonymously trying to move his way forward from the 75th call-up position, and two, that 8th-place finish Van der Poel pulled off is going to be the standard Pidcock is compared against. It’s science.
While 2018 U23 Reno National Champion Christopher Blevins is no longer a cyclocross (although we would love to have him back racing this fall!), he is still an American mega-talent worth watching as he starts his Elite career. Blevins finished second to Pidders at Worlds last fall and enters the weekend as the youngest rider in the Elite field.
Finally, shouts to Our Maan Daan Soete (call-up 126) and hometown hero Marcel Meisen, who is number 1 in the hearts of the German faithful but the DFL call-up at 158.
Elite Women
On the topic of riders making a big splash in mountain biking, it makes sense to start with Ceylin “Prime Time” Alvarado when talking about the Elite Women. Alvarado casually won one World Cup and finished third at Worlds last fall in some of her first-ever mountain bike races.
Now, as she graduates to the Elites, Alvarado faces a Drakeian situation—started from the bottom, now we’re here(?). She has the 74th call-up on Sunday, so her first goal will be to crack that top 40 so she qualifies for the short track race and then set her sights on besting the mark teammate Van der Poel set with that 8th-place finish.
Last fall, Evie Richards graduated to the Elites, and she made her presence known right away by winning both short track races, including one after crashing at the start of the bell lap and coming back with a patented Evie Richards watt bomb. Like when Van der Poel joined the mountain bike scene, it was an introduction to skill cyclocross racers have become all too familiar with. Richards finished 6th and 8th in the two World Cups, so she returns this year looking to crack the top 5 and then make her way onto the podium.
While a lot of the focus is on the cyclocross youngs, Eva Lechner is still out here jumping off rocks and doing her thing. Lechner welcomed her move to the second half of her 30s by finishing second at Worlds last October, and she remains a threat to make a push for the podium if the day is right.
Friend of the Bulletin Jenn Jackson of Canada is also hoping to continue her rise in the mountain bike scene. Jackson got the best Worlds result of her career last October and came up just short of finishing as the top Canuck. Jackson kicked off her 2021 mountain bike season with a 10th-place finish last weekend at Leukerbad, and with the 50th call-up, a move into that top 40 and the short track qualifier is not out of the question for the mountain bike / cyclocross crossover.
Also I have speculated for a while that MVdP’s ultimate goal is to be World Champ in MTB, CX and Road in same year - aka PFP. He came close in 2019 actually.
Well you are preaching to the converted as I for one love watching these races. And IMO it is good CX prep and apparently the Pro’s do as well with so many top riders doing both. Also like CX the women’s racing is equally as good and entertaining as the men’s - sometimes better - and US racers more competitive. Bring on Rob and Bart!