Mountain bike racing 2024 - a year in review

It would be fair to say that 2024 has been a corker of a year for mountain bike racing, and one laced with drama, too. We take a look back at the last season.

off.road.cc staff

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Dec 27 2024

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Feature

[Words by Steve Thomas]

We’ve seen some cutthroat finales, gut-wrenching mishaps and mashups, heart-warming returns to glory and fairy-tale endings, breakout performances, a changing of the guard, and so much more during this past year of international mountain bike racing. Naturally, we should start our look back at 2024 with the most dramatic and biggest battles of all, those of the Paris Olympic XCO races.

Paris Olympics 2024, hoops, hopes and broken dreams

An Olympics year is always a huge for sport, and glory here can make or break an athlete’s career. This means that in XCO mountain biking terms it pretty much determines how the potential medal contenders, and indeed those who simply hope to qualify for the race, plan and race their whole season, and even much longer in some cases.

Although in many ways the Olympics is “just another world-level MTB race,” even for the most accomplished racers an Olympic medal can be career-defining and help them reach far beyond the cycling world in terms of recognition and reward.

This time around something of a cyclo-cross/dirt-criterium race was anticipated, given the lack of race-track drama. Thankfully, in the end, it turned into a fantastic race and one that raises a few questions as to whether more such city-based races would help boost the value and profile of the sport beyond the cycling world.

With the Team INEOS duo of Tom Pidcock and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot (PFP) heading the list of favourites for the titles, and with them having perhaps the best-funded and supported long-term lead-up to the race, great hopes and pressure lay on their well-proven shoulders. On their days both delivered the gold in fine style, almost as planned.

Very early in the women’s race the French dup of PFP and Leona Lecomte set a fierce pace, with only Puck Pieterse of the Netherlands able to match them. When the “veteran” PFP turned it on there was no looking back, and little looking forward for her rivals. The French racer’s victory was a career-long goal realised, though sadly Lecomte crashed out in a scary rock garden mishap, while Pieterse flatted at the eleventh hour, which cost her what looked set to be a sure-fire medal.

As for the men’s title race? That was intense and uncertain right through, leaving British fans at the edge of their seats in excitement as Pidcock came back from a late-game flat tyre. The Yorkshire terrier made an all-or-nothing dive for glory on the final drop into the finishing corner, passing French hope and race leader Victor Koretzky by the skin of his elbows, breaking the hearts of not only the rider himself but of a whole nation – but, hey, that’s just how you win bike races, and, this surely ranks as the most dynamic finale of the year.

Sadly, but understandably, having achieved their long-term goals both PFP and Pidcock decided that this would be their last true MTB race season for now, and both will focus on road racing for the foreseeable.

The UCI Mountain bike World Cup

Cross-country

The XCO and XCC cross-country World Cup season kicked off in April with two rounds in Brazil. With the very limited Olympic qualifying slots being battled for right up until late May, the going was always going to be full on from the start. For many riders, their Olympic selection hopes rested on those opening two rounds, and, thus, the racing was closely fought and tense.

While many familiar names made their marks and earned the necessary Olympic qualification points here, the biggest hit was that Nino Shurter was not featuring in his familiar lead role, leaving many to question whether the XC racing GOAT was out to pasture in what we believed would be his final year of racing. Thankfully, his slow start to the year was down to illness, and he duly returned to the podium a few weeks later in Nove’ Mesto, where Tom Pidcock and PFP took XCO glory, clearly stating their Olympic bids were on track.

Nino did follow up with a win in few weeks late in Val di Sole, although his once season-long dominance was now becoming less frequent (as he told us a few weeks ago). Although Koretzky had an amazing season, the breakout riders, or rather the male riders who came of age in this year’s men’s Elite racing were South African Alan Hatherly, who won the series outright and two individual rounds and his Cannondale teammate Charlie Aldridge of the UK, who has marked himself as a rider destined for greatness in the near future.

The Elite women’s was a varied and open battle all through, with Swiss rider Alessandra Keller taking the overall series title from Savilia Blunk of the US and Candice Lill of South Africa, both of whom have made great progress this year.

Downhill

The seven-round UCI Downhill World Cup kicked off in early May in Fort William, and the result board had a very familiar and ominous look to it, with Frenchman Loic Bruni and Valentina Holl of Austria tasting first blood, and both going on to take the overall series titles.

The French duo of Bruni and Amaury Pierron scored the lion’s share of the spoils between them throughout in the men’s category, while Holl was dominant in women’s series. That said, certainly didn’t have it all her own way – with the old French guard making their mark in numbers, and with Britain’s Tahnee Seagrave also marking a hard-fought and emotional return to the top step of the podium in winning at Val di Sole.

World Championships

Held high up in the Pyrenees of Andorra, this year’s World Championships were very much seen as a race of retribution for those who missed out on glory and selection at the Olympics. It was also a case of taking the racing back to the mountains, as opposed to the suburbs of Paris, as well as bringing downhill racing back to the fore again.

Cross-country

Although both Pidcock and PFP turned out for the battle in Andorra, neither were able to match those to who they’d given the slip in Paris a few weeks earlier. Here, the underdogs did indeed get their day – although, naturally, none of these racers could be considered as such.

After a mixed bunch in terms of weather conditions in the week leading to the Elite XCO showdowns, racing got underway on the well-proven trails of the landlocked principality. In the Elite Women’s race, the flying Dutch racer Puck Pieterse made short work in upturning her Olympic disappointment to take a dominant victory, and to think - she still qualifies as U23.

Perhaps a bigger surprise to some was the victory of Alan Hatherly in the Elite men’s race, the first-ever XCO world title by any African racer. His win rounded off a near-perfect season, which surely helped seal his immediate future of mixing MTB racing with WorldTour road racing next year.

While many had hopes that Nino Schurter would end his career with a rainbow fairy-tale, it wasn’t to be. The flip side was that he later decided to continue chasing rainbows and racing in 2025, news most were happy to hear.

For the Brits, the highlight of the championship will doubtless be the fine victory of Evie Richards in XCC short track, just ahead of PFP. Meanwhile, Britain’s Charlie also took a well-deserved silver medal in the men’s XCC, just behind Koretzky, which made for a great British CX medal haul when Pidcock’s XCO bronze is added to the pot.

Downhill

Andorra has long been home to epic downhill courses and racing, as well as to a few of the greatest racers around - including Greg Minnaar of South Africa, one of the greatest and longest-serving downhill races of all time - who was riding in his last season as World Cup racer.

Although many eyes were on Minnaar, sadly things didn’t quite play out to his usual level of perfection on the day, and Frenchman Loris Vergier scored a long-awaited and slightly surprising victory.

Valentina Holl well and truly demonstrated that she is the best female downhill racer out there right now by adding another rainbow to her growing collection, while comparative veterans Myriam Nicole of France and Britain’s Tahnee Seagrave took silver and bronze.

All in it’s been a great season of XC and DH racing, and with a number of format changes, tweaks, and a whole bunch of young hopefuls already scrapping at the heels of current greats, next year should be something of a fresh and exciting one.