This Saturday, snow-covered slopes will provide the stage for the winter cycling showdown… two back-to-back events on one day will decide the winners of the 2025 UCI Snow Bike World Championships.
Almost exactly a year on from the inaugural UCI Snow Bike World Championships in February 2024, the same venue, the French resort of Châtel, in Haute-Savoie, is set to host the second edition. This time round, all the unmissable action is packed into one intense day of racing: Saturday 8 February,
Like last year the 2025 UCI Snow Bike World Championships feature two events: Super-G and dual slalom.
Both are inspired by the alpine skiing disciplines of the same name. They are raced on mountain bikes, with studded tyres permitted – according to the regulations in the technical guide - for grip on the snow. Cornering skill, judgement and nerve will once again be paramount as the riders face split-second timings from the start huts to the finish line and against each other.
What is Super-G?
Again, taking its cues from the familiar ski event, Super-G sees riders tackle long and medium turns at high speed. It’s a ‘one rider at a time’ time-trial format, against the clock: any rider who posts the fastest time takes their place in the leader’s hot seat, while the riders with quicker qualifying times run last, bringing the tension to boiling point in the freezing weather.
The action is set on the L’Aity ski slope and shares part of the Linga ski slope with the dual slalom course. Over a course almost 2000 metres long and dropping 600 metres, each run is around two minutes of intense concentration, skill and bravery (the fastest time from last year was 1:47.52).
Check out the run from Great Britain’s Ben Moore as he hits some great speeds but also hits the hard-packed snow!
What is dual slalom?
Just like the skiing event it draws from, the UCI Snow Bike World Championships dual slalom sees pairs of riders go head-to-head down a short section of ski slope, making tight turns left and right through marked gates. The elimination format sees one rider from each round go through, and the other eliminated, until the last two face off in the big final.
Like last year the course is set on the Linga ski slope, a little over 500 metres long, with an elevation drop of just over 150 metres.
In 2024, the Super-G races were won by two French athletes: French Snow Bike Champion Pierre Thévenard – who lives in Châtel – and fellow French athlete Morgane Such.
Thévenard won an amazing second gold medal in the dual slalom, while the women’s victory went to Swiss rider (and Downhill European Champion) Lisa Baumann.
On their way to the gold medals they had to defeat such experienced and proven downhill stars as 2012 UCI World Champion Morgane Charre (FRA) and Great Britain’s Danny Hart, who was UCI Mountain Bike World Champion in 2011 and 2016.
Alongside them were riders of the calibre of Italy’s Veronika Widmann (silver medal in the Super-G), Dylan Levesque (FRA) and Ireland’s Henry Kerr (silver medal and fastest in the first two splits in the Super-G), as well as downhill UCI World Champion and five-time UCI World Cup overall winner Sabrina Jonnier (FRA), who was tempted out of retirement for the special Haute-Savoie event.
All three 2024 UCI World Champions will be among the big name riders this Saturday.