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Almost 30 years after mountain bike racing made its debut as an Olympic sport, much has changed for cross-country racing: The bikes are vastly better, for one, and the courses are far different. And you don’t have to change your own flat tires anymore, much to Tom Pidcock’s gratitude.
Both the women’s race on Sunday and the men’s event Monday were action-packed affairs, even if they played out far different. The men saw a tense duel for gold only decided in the final section of punchy singletrack, while for the women it was the silver-medal battle that animated the race. In both, there were tears of joy and heartbreak, crashes and controversy, and edge-of-your seat racing. Zac Williams and Cor Vos captured some of the most memorable moments from two golden days of action.
But one thing hasn’t changed: it remains one of the most exciting sports at the Games. No preliminary heats, no last-chance qualifiers: just 36 men and 36 women and around 90 minutes of all-out racing to decide who goes home with the hardware and who’s left waiting another four years.
Three top favorites led out the start as France’s Loana Lecomte and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot sandwiched Puck Pieterse of the Netherlands.But it was Italy’s Martina Berta with the hole shot up the hill. Meanwhile, French fans were out in force.Lecomte, an excellent descender who won on the ferociously technical Crans-Montana course last month, briefly led but a hard mid-race crash in the rock garden left her with a concussion and a DNF.Pieterse was hard on the chase after Ferrand-Prévot went clear and was comfortably alone in second when disaster struck in the form of a rear flat and a slow wheel change.Haley Batten (USA) and 2016 gold medalist Jenny Rissveds (Sweden) formed a tight, evenly matched chase group. After dropping Austria’s Laura Stigger, the pair would fight it out over silver.Up front, Ferrand-Prévot was simply untouchable, building a lead of three minutes.One of the few top riders on a hardtail, Ferrand-Prévot looked completely comfortable and in control on the few technical sections on the Elancourt Hill course.“It’s my fourth Olympics, and I never, never, ever perform,” said Ferrand-Prévot, referencing her disappointment from Tokyo, where she was 10th. But in her last race and in front of the home crowd, she delivered arguably her finest-ever ride.A brief look back, but Ferrand-Prévot was more than safely clear. Or perhaps she was just looking back on her glittering off-road career before she switches to skinny tires to target the 2025 Tour de France Femmes?Soaking it all in, one last time.Meanwhile Batten, who like Pieterse had a flat, had chased back on and dropped Rissveds with a hard acceleration in the woods just before the finish. Her silver medal is the highest ever achieved by an American mountain biker. Rissveds soloed in just behind for bronze.Ferrand-Prévot was overcome with emotion on the medal stand, going out as a gold medalist on home soil. We can’t say enough about Rissveds’ empathy and class. Earlier in the race, she called out to Batten’s mechanics to alert them to her competitor’s flat, and the two shared a long, emotional embrace at the finish. It’s easy to be cynical about the Olympic ideal of sportsmanship and the brotherhood/sisterhood of sports, but on Sunday especially, the respected and accomplished Rissveds embodied both.On Monday in the men’s race, it was an equally furious charge for the holeshot, even with just 36 riders instead of the usual 80+ for a World Cup.American Riley Amos – a 22-year-old U23 rider racing for the first time against some of this field – got the initial jump and would eventually finish seventh – the best-ever for an American male. Read our profile of the young American talent.But it was reigning Olympic champ Tom Pidcock and home-country favorite Victor Koretzky who got clear of the chase on lap three.When Pidcock suffered a flat that knocked him out of the lead duo, South Africa’s Alan Hatherly, whose first-ever elite World Cup XCO win three weeks ago in Les Gets signaled his form, chased solo in second, pursued by Great Britain’s Charlie Aldridge. Rio Olympic champion and bazillion-time (OK, 36-time) World Cup winner Nino Schurter had an uncharacteristically off day, including a near-crash in the rock garden, and finished 9th.Wheel changed, Pidcock mounted a furious chase through the pursuers, who had caught Hatherly. When Pidcock attacked, only Hatherly could match his pace.Ahead, Koretzky plowed a lonely furrow in first, but Pidcock’s inexorable chase narrowed the gap at every time split.Pidcock eventually shed Hatherly and caught Koretzky. For more than a lap the two leaders traded wicked attacks. Koretzky accelerated hard near the top of the course, but Pidcock fought back on as an almost imperceptible bobble cost Koretzky time.A vicious acceleration in the final wooded section gave Pidcock the inside line, and a touch of handlebars made Koretzky bobble as the defending champ surged ahead to a close solo win (to, we might note, some booing from the partisan crowd).The difference between gold and silver? Maybe one small bobble, and a line choice that opened the door for Pidcock, but Koretzky had nothing but love on the podium for an appreciative home crowd.For Pidcock, the win cements his rep as the best big-event racer in the sport: he doesn’t race off-road that much, but he has a world title, European title, and seven World Cup XCO wins (in 11 rounds) since he moved to the elite ranks in 2021.
