Coming soon after the 2021 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships, more battles for mountain bike rainbow stripes are on the horizon... this time for the high-octane four-up sprint format of cross-country Eliminator.
The 2021 UCI Mountain Bike Eliminator (XCE) World Championships in Graz, Austria, with the quickfire series of races for men and women, take place on Sunday 5 September.
The first ever UCI World Championships for XCE were held in 2012, also in Austria: Saalfelden. But it’s the country’s second largest city Graz, with its impressive medieval area – a UNESCO Heritage Site – that hosts the 2021 event.
The XCE course is in Graz’s Karmeliterplatz – a handsome square with remains of old city walls. It’s a little longer than courses seen in some other XCE competitions and is similar to that raced in the UCI World Cup at the same venue in 2019. It was the final race of the last full season before the Covid-19 pandemic compromised the schedule in 2020. On that occasion, the Italian Gaia Tormena arrived with the UCI World Cup overall already in the bag and hit Graz determined “to have fun”.
Fun is certainly what the returning crowds will expect from the day with juniors’ and kids’ races after the qualifying sessions and before the main event.
“It’s a tough track, really tough, with a long climb near the end,” said four-time XCE UCI World Champion Titouan Perrin-Ganier, of France. “I think the toughest rider will take the win”.
In fact it was fellow Frenchman Hugo Briatta who converted his fastest qualification time trial time to the victory on that day in 2019, putting Perrin-Garnier into second place, with Jeroen van Eck (NED) in third.
With her sprint victory over Tormena in Graz, Sweden’s Ella Holmegård confirmed her overall second place in the 2019 UCI World Cup. Iryna Popova (UKR) finished third in the Austrian round.
In the 2018 Graz race, home rider Daniel Federspiel – the last men’s UCI World Champion before Perrin-Ganier – took the win from Briatta, Fabrice Mels (BEL) and Perrin-Garnier. The women’s race winner was Anne Terpstra, the Dutch rider who’s currently on fine form, having taken silver in the cross-country Olympic race at the recent UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Val di Sole (Italy).
All participants will be going all-out in the ‘winner-takes-all’ UCI World Championships, where tactical point-scoring is set aside and the rainbow stripes are earned in an afternoon.
The reigning XCE UCI World Champions Isaure Medde and Titouan Perrin-Ganier made it a French double in Leuven, Belgium, last October. It was the fourth title for the Frenchman and the first time for Medde, who beat Gaia Tormena in a photo finish.
And while Perrin-Ganier may wish to claim his 5th title, Medde has said a fond farewell to XCE.
But there will be a number of riders equally convinced that they have the pace, race craft and confidence to take the rainbow stripes for themselves.
2019 UCI World Champion – and clear 2021 UCI World Cup overall leader – Tormena is the women’s favourite. Germany’s Marion Fromberger is a potential threat, while Holmegård, who stood on the 2nd step of the XCE World Championship podium in Chengdu, China, in 2017, would love to make it to the top step. Then there are outsiders such as the Dutch duo of Didi de Vries and Chimène Boer.
In the men’s competition, 2021 UCI World Cup overall leader Simon Gegenheimer (GER) has come 2nd three times but at 32 is itching to earn his stripes. Briatta has been runner-up twice. Then there’s the newly re-crowned European Champion Van Eck, who recently competed in the UCI World Championships for E-Mountain Bike in Val di Sole.
Could it be the young Frenchman Lorenzo Serres or the Swede Anton Olstam, who is starting to look comfortable on the podium? Elias Tranninger is sitting in 11th place in the 2021 UCI World Cup, on 48 points after three rounds. A home UCI Worlds victory for the 2019 Austrian champion is a long-shot, but anything can happen in this explosive format: one missed corner or dropped chain and the narrative changes in a split-second...
We’ll find out in Graz on Sunday 5 September!