Three days after the enduro and E-enduro racing, the 2025 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Valais, Switzerland, will see two rainbow jerseys of UCI World Champion awarded for the E-Mountain bike cross country (E-MTB XC).
The E-MTB XC races on Thursday 4 September will be disputed in Bellwald, in the Aletsch Arena, with the women setting off at 16h00 and the men’s race scheduled for 17h30.
Alpine course
The route takes the riders north from the start / finish line to reach the loop course (2.6km and a 178m drop) in the lower section of Bike Park Bellwald. The course shares some of the area with that seen in the enduro and E-Enduro competitions on stages five (Lord of the Rims) and six (Back to the Roots).
UCI World Champions return for more rainbows
In the women’s competition, Germany’s Sofia Wiedenroth won the rainbow bands in 2024, a minute ahead of her regular UCI World Cup rival Nathalie Schneitter, the Swiss rider a further minute clear of third-placed Florencia Espiñeira Herreros, who made it a great double-podium day for Chile in Pal-Arinsal, Andorra. All three 2024 medal-winning female athletes return for this year’s race.
The defending UCI World Champion in the men’s event is Jérôme Gilloux. The Frenchman was almost 30 seconds ahead of silver medallist Martín Vidaurre Kossmann in Pal-Arinsal, with another experienced competitor, Hugo Pigeon (FRA), taking bronze. The two French riders are on the entry list for this week’s E-MTB XC race, while the Chilean is concentrating on the cross-country Olympic (XCO) and cross-country short track (XCC) events, along with his highly successful campaign in these two formats at this year’s WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series.
Looking further back, it was a Swiss double in 2023. Schneitter won in a beautiful race in Glentress, Scotland, United Kingdom (her second UCI World Champion title after her 2019 success in Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada), ahead of Wiedenroth and Justine Tonso (FRA), who does not compete this year.
Joris Ryf was 2023 UCI World Champion ahead of Pigeon and Gilloux. Like Schneitter, Swiss Champion Ryf will be even more motivated than usual to repeat this victory on home soil, and they will both undoubtedly receive huge support.
UCI World Cup form guide
Four rounds have been competed so far in the 2025 WES UCI E-MTB Cross-country World Cup: the first two in Cheile Grădiștei (Romania) in June, and two in Monaco - Alpes Maritimes in July. Three more rounds in Italy will follow, after the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships.
Austria’s Anna Spielmann (overall winner in 2024) won the first two rounds, before Wiedenroth upgraded from second to first place for rounds three and four and took the lead in the overall UCI World Cup standings. Schneitter took silver at both Monaco rounds after missing the first two races.
Mirko Tabacchi – one of a larger number of Italian riders competing at the top level of E-MTB XC this year, and currently at the top of the men’s UCI World Cup overall standings – and Théo Charmes (FRA) were winners in Romania. Then Gilloux returned, taking victories in rounds three and four. In June the four-time overall UCI World Cup winner had said:
“I prefer to step back a bit during a UCI World Cup season and focus on the UCI World Championships in Switzerland in early September… I remain driven by the urge to take off some great races, whatever the format. I'm always competitive, and I want to participate in the future of our beautiful discipline.”
Two other Italian UCI World Cup podium finishers, Andrea Garibbo and Cristian Bernardi, are amongst the six Italians in the mix in Valais.
Another contender is the Netherlands’ Jeroen van Eck, who is also a familiar face in cross-country eliminator (XCE), a speciality in which he was crowned UCI World Champion in 2024.
Meanwhile, Switzerland’s Joris Ryf has been concentrating on XCO and XCC at the WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series this year but still has his focus on the E-MTB XC at the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships.
There is no doubt it will be an intense battle for the 2025 E-MTB XC UCI World Champion titles on Thursday. In the women’s competition, both Wiedenroth and Schneitter already have medals of every colour and neither will be satisfied to leave Bellwald / Aletsch Arena without another gold.
Pigeon has multiple silver and bronze medals to his name and will give everything for gold, while Gilloux will be looking for another UCI World Champion title.
But there will be plenty of other athletes determined to upset the tables on Thursday 4 September.