Mountain bikers are playing a game of musical chairs that will result in new kits, different bikes, and fresh faces in the paddock for 2025. More accurately, the transfers that are hitting the headlines this month have been in the works all year long, but are just getting announced. But the scale of movement this year is greater than usual.
There are big moves at some of the largest squads in cross country racing. Tokyo Olympic Champion Jolanda Neff has left Trek Factory Racing after signing with the squad in 2019; World Champion and World Cup overall winner Kate Courtney has left Scott-SRAM (also signing with the Swiss outfit in 2019), and Cannondale Factory Racing have bid adieu to two other rainbow jersey holders in Mona Mitterwallner and Simon Andreassen. And then there’s Tom Pidcock.
There is athlete movement at nearly every team, and some – like the Santa Cruz-RockShox Pro Team – are folding entirely. What on earth is going on?
Olympic-size transfer dynamics
A common refrain is that cross-country contracts are tied to the four-year Olympic cycle. In some ways that’s true. KMC-Ridley, the team run by 1996 Olympic Champion Bart Brentjens, has been explicit in mentioning the 2028 Games in their signing announcements of Julian Schelb, Lia Schrievers and Tom Schellekens.
“His main goal in mountain bike is competing at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles 2028,” the team said about Schellekens, who departed Visma-Lease a Bike in favor of the dirt.
But endurance sport agent Patrick Lemieux said it was a coincidence that so many riders’ contracts were up this year. “It wasn’t like people are like ‘Hey, we’re gonna run all of these contracts through the Olympics,’” he told Escape Collective. “It just kind of happened to be that way, where it ended.”
In a time of post-COVID bike industry turbulence, another factor is budgets. Lemieux said team managers likely would have known that cuts would come eventually, but the actuals aren’t hitting until this year since riders were still under contract in 2023 and 2024.
Budget cuts may not be targeting mountain biking or cross-country specifically, Lemieux said. Rather, an overall marketing budget at a brand is slashed and that filters down to sponsored-athletes and team programs across disciplines. Triathlon, road, gravel, plus endurance and gravity mountain biking will all be pinched to greater and lesser extents.
It’s a game of distributing cash to various buckets and losing some to the decisions of the big bosses.
There’s also the factor of what an athlete is worth and an athlete’s future potential. Neff was likely an expensive rider for Trek, but she hasn’t had the same results as she used to. Anton Cooper also left Trek, with the New Zealander holding numerous national and continental titles but less successful results on the World Cup recently. Many teams are shifting younger.
Trek gained Gunnar Holmgren, putting their rider tally at five rather than six like last year. The team is relatively young, with Riley Amos and Madigan Munroe (represented by Lemieux) both re-upping their contracts this year as they step into the elite field.
“You could look at the Trek program and assess that they’re doing some long range forecasting here,” Lemieux said. “They’re betting on somebody like Madigan to perform by the time ‘28 rolls around.”
Trek Factory Racing also let go of five gravity riders and announced they are putting their enduro team on hiatus, a sign that budgets may be tighter on the gravity side of things.
The major transfers
So, who’s going where? There’s still a lot we don’t know, but here’s what we do:
- Trek Factory Racing looks set at five XC riders with the signing of Holmgren. The team has already done a photoshoot. It hasn’t been announced where Neff or Cooper are headed.
- Specialized Factory Racing will look a lot like last year with Christopher Blevins and Haley Batten renewing with the team for 2 more years. Laura Stigger will split her time between racing on the road with Team SD Worx–Protime and the dirt for Specialized Factory. The contract situations of Victor Koretzky, Sina Frei and Martin Vidaurre haven’t been mentioned, but Blevins told Pinkbike that “we don’t have any new teammates.”
- Cannondale Factory Racing split with Andreassen and Mitterwallner, but Charlie Aldridge is staying with the team. One name thrown around is Candice Lill, who earned great results last year as a privateer sponsored by Cannondale. When asked earlier this fall about whether she is looking for a factory ride, Cannondale said they couldn’t comment.
- Scott-SRAM let Courtney go and have signed first-year elites Bjorn Riley and Emilly Johnston. Both riders are coming from Trek Future Racing, which is focused on U23 riders so it’s natural that they switched teams. The team is holding onto Nino Schurter, Fillipo Colombo, and Andri Frishknecht.
- Loana Lecomte is leaving Canyon, with no word on the other Canyon CLLCTV athletes. Lecomte is reportedly going to Team BMC. The same French newspaper report said that recently-retired Maxime Marrot will be heading up a new team and has his eyes on Mathis Azzaro.
- Alan Hatherly signed with Jayco-AlUla to race a split calendar of road and mountain bike. In the dirt he’ll be supported by Giant Factory Racing.
- Decathlon-Ford already announced earlier this year they are keeping Savilia Blunk and Greta Seiwald. Social media posts indicate the team is undergoing a shakeup of equipment sponsors with Manitou, Hutchinson and Mavic all leaving the picture.
- Santa Cruz-RockShox has folded with team management saying it will be involved in a program focused on young riders. Where the five Santa Cruz riders will land is still unknown.
- Wilier-Vittoria renewed Simon Avondetto’s contract through 2028. The team is parting ways with Daniel Geismayer, Fabian Rabensteiner, and Samuele Porro. According to Lemieux, the team is bulking up with cash previously spent on Astana.
- Thomus Maxon announced that both its title sponsors have re-signed contracts, but the fate of their riders is unknown.
- Kelsey Urban said on a podcast that she and Jenny Rissveds will be on different teams next year, suggesting the American National Champion is leaving Team 31-Ibis.
- And of course Olympic champion Tom Pidcock has left the Ineos Grenadiers road outfit for Q36.5. He will race for some combination of Q36.5 (the clothing brand) and his old sponsor Pinarello for the 2025 cross country season. He is not joining the Scott-SRAM cross country program despite Scott sponsoring the Q36.5 road team.
There will no doubt be a flurry on transfer announcements in the new year, as the puzzle pieces are put together at last.
Ryan Simonovich is a cycling writer focused on the off-road side of the sport. Catch more of his MTB and gravel coverage on his Ryan MTB Substack site.
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