An impressive line-up of top-class riders will take to the start of the 22nd edition of the UCI Mountain Bike Marathon World Championships, to be held in Snowshoe, USA.
Following last year’s competition in Glentress – part of the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships held across Scotland (Great Britain) – and the 2022 edition in Haderslev, Denmark, the 2024 event moves away from Europe: the racing in Snowshoe, West Virginia, will take place on 22 September.
The UCI World Championships for cross-country marathon (XCM) have previously been hosted in venues as far apart as South Africa (Pietermaritzburg, 2014), Norway (Lillehammer, 2005) and Turkey (Sakarya, 2020), but have not been held on the American continent until this year. As well as providing sizeable challenges for the competitors, Snowshoe offers amazing scenery and hospitality for visitors and will put XCM in the global spotlight.
Course and terrain
Snowshoe Mountain sits at around 1520m (5,000ft), and while elevation is nothing new to these competitors, it’s a factor to consider. At 104km long and with 1988m ascent/descent, the course is similar to that of the final round of the 2023 UCI XCM World Cup, won by Germany’s Simon Stiebjahn and the USA’s Hannah Otto, who has a long-standing history of racing on the mountain.
With a mixture of singletrack and doubletrack there are opportunities for overtaking, but also for strategic and defensive riding. The organisers describe the surface as 8.5km (5.3 miles) paved, 72km (44.7 miles) unpaved and the ever-intriguing 25km (15.6 miles, 24%) unknown.
“It’s super technical and it lasts forever,” said 2023 UCI World Cup overall winner Lejla Njemčević (BIH) of last year’s course, “Riding three and half hours on this feels like an enduro race!’
Snowshoe and the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup
Other high-profile events to have taken place at Snowshoe include exciting cross-country (XC) and downhill (DHI) rounds of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup. These have typically been late in the season and important in deciding overall titles, which can give a ‘UCI World Champs’ feel as some riders need to take a ‘do or die’ approach in their last-ditch attempt to move up the overall UCI World Cup rankings.
Stand-out moments include the 2023 cross-country Olympic (XCO) battles between eventual winner Jordan Sarrou (FRA) and Nino Schurter (SUI), and between Austrian Laura Stigger and Loana Lecomte (FRA), who finally had to make do with second place. Then there were the victories in 2022 for David Valero (ESP) and 2016 XCM UCI World Champion Jolanda Neff (SUI). Or the stars-and-stripes domination in the cross-country short track (XCC) for Christopher Blevins (one of 20 American men on the 2024 UCI XCM Worlds start list) and Gwendalyn Gibson on home soil.
Snowshoe has already brought lots of thrills to the UCI World Cups, and now hosts a UCI World Championships, where the ultimate prize is the rainbow bands for the fastest woman and the fastest man.
Riders to watch
There are 88 men on the provisional start list, but the reigning UCI World Champion Henrique Avancini (also 2018 UCI World Champion) isn’t amongst them, the Brazilian having made an emotional retirement in the rainbow bands. His fellow 2023 podium finishers Martin Stošek (CZE) and Lukas Baum (GER) are set to race. 2022 UCI World Champion Sam Gaze (NZL) won’t be there, but silver and bronze medalists Andreas Seewald (GER, 2021 UCI World Champion) and Simon Andreassen (DEN), will, along with 2019 and 2020 UCI World Champion Héctor Páez León (COL).
Of the 51 women on the start list, all three podium athletes from 2023 feature, with Mona Mitterwallner (also 2021 UCI World Champion) looking to retain her title and in-form Candice Lill (RSA) and Adelheid Morath (GER) each hoping to go even better than before. From the 2022 UCI World Championships podium only bronze medalist – and 2016 UCI World Champion – Jolanda Neff (SUI), working on her comeback, is on the start list. 2019 and 2022 UCI XCM World Champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (FRA) has switched to road racing.
UCI XCM World Cup form guide
Performances in the first two rounds of the 2024 UCI XCM World Cup give some indication of form. Round 1, at Nové Město na Moravě, Czechia, late May, saw victory for Italy’s Fabian Rabensteiner and Namibian Vera Looser.
Then at Haute-Savoie in early July (part of the week-long extravaganza including racing in all formats of the UCI Mountain Bike World Series took place) the women’s XCM race was won by Njemčević followed by Otto - one of eight American women on this weekend’s start list – and Looser. The men’s race was won by 42-year-old Páez León, who held off another former (2021) UCI XCM World Champion Andreas Seewald (GER).
It promises to be an epic competition at Snowshoe Mountain!