Bike
MTB
Who'll be riding what during the 2022 UCI MTB World Cups?
With many downhill and cross-country riders making team changes in the off-season, it's time to look at how the transfer market has shaped up with World Cup racing on the horizon.
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It's that time again when we reveal what's happened team-wise for downhill and cross-country athletes in the Mercedes-Benz UCI Mountain Bike World Cup series as they head into a new year of competition.
It's a fact of life that athlete contracts end with certain teams if there's no agreement to extend or the athlete decides to leave. What happens next is that trade teams jockey for position over the available talent. With there being only so many UCI Trade Team saddles in the pits and any number of pros keen to fill them, there will always be winners and losers in this off-season transfer shuffle that excites the fans almost as much as the racing between the tapes.
The 2022 off-season has been particularly busy in terms of athlete moves, downhill in particular, while it was an end of an Olympic cycle for the cross-country circuit and a natural time to seek pastures new.
01
Downhill
Downhill mountain biking is similar to motorsports like F1 and MotoGP™ in that there are limited numbers of viable teams and fewer still who have a big budget. That said, a top-tier rider moving teams can trigger a frenzy of other team changes.
New faces at Santa Cruz Syndicate
There's three new members to the Syndicate and one departure going into 2022. Don't worry, Greg Minnaar hasn't left and will continue to ride for the team in his 40th year on this planet. Luca Shaw has departed however. Coming in are Britain's Laurie Greenland, Canadian Jackson Goldstone and Germany's Nina Hoffmann to give the Syndicate a full complement of riders again.
Straight into a Santa Cruz Syndicate team camp for Greenland and Goldstone
© Steel City Media/Sam Needham
No one guessed, right?! 👀 Stoked to be joining the dream team @scsyndicate. Going to be a huge year and I can’t wait to get between the tape
Greenland leaves Mondraker, while Hoffmann steps into a trade team after running her own program for two years and the current Junior World Champion Goldstone leaves Trek Factory Racing.
Jackson Goldstone gets his Red Bull helmet
It's been quite the winter for Jackson Goldstone as the 17-year-old also picked up Red Bull sponsorship. Goldstone follows in the footsteps of fellow Canadian Finn Iles in picking up sponsorship as a junior rider.
Expansion at MS Mondraker
The other team to make major changes to their 2022 lineup is MS Mondraker. The Spanish-based outfit will have five elite riders on their roster for next year. Austrian David Trummer, Irishman Jacob Dickson and the promising Tuhoto Ariki Pene of New Zealand join the ranks, alongside Brook Macdonald and Italian women's racer Eleonora Farina.
After years with GT, Martin Maes makes a change
There can't be many pro mountain bike riders that have stayed with the same bike sponsor for nine years, but Belgian enduro and occasional downhill racer Martin Maes was one such rider up until the end of 2021. Maes and GT announced a parting, with Maes since announcing that he will ride for Orbea from 2022 onwards. He will, of course, mainly ride in the Enduro World Series with team-mates Vid Persak and Laura Charles,but is also committed to riding the Downhill World Cup when his calendar allows.
Martin Maes will be racing Orbea bikes for 2022 and beyond
© Orbea
Pastures new for Luca Shaw
So where did Luca Shaw end up after leaving the Santa Cruz Syndicate? Well, the American will now race in 2022 and beyond with the Canyon CLLCTV Factory Team, alongside Australians Troy Brosnan and Jack Moir, as well as Canadian Mark Wallace.
Talking of Canyon, the German bike firm is spreading its influence over gravity racing far and wide by backing yet another downhill team. They already have the CLLCTV Factory Team above and Tahnée Seagrave's Canyon CLLCTV FMD team, but new for 2022 will be Canyon CLLCTV Pirelli. This team will concentrate on developing up-and-coming talent and includes the younger brother of seasoned French racers Amaury and Baptiste Pierron, Antoine Pierron.
A new bike for Luca Shaw to get used to for 2022
© Yann Audax/Canyon Bicycles
A new CLLCTV – Antonine Pierron, Loris Revelli, Dante Silva & Henri Kiefer
© Yann Audax/Canyon Bicycles
Elsewhere in DH...
Outside of the big ticket team changes, this is what else has been going on. Connor Fearon will ride for Canadian bike firm Forbidden Bikes after leaving Kona. American Neko Mulally has exited Aaron Gwin's Intense Factory Racing team to create his own team, which involves a self-designed bike. Intense have signed up Dakota Norton to continue their USA representation and Britain's Joe Breeden will also be a team-mate of Gwin's.
YT Mob, Gwin's old team, will be taking a break from racing for the foreseeable, but will give frame support to Ireland's 2020 junior world champion, Oisin O'Callaghan, who's racing elite for the first time in 2022.
Kye A'Hern, another former junior world champ, will race for the NS Bikes UR Team next season, taking up the spot vacated by fellow Australian Mick Hannah, who retired at the end of the 2021 season. New Zealander George Brannigan is also a new face on UR this coming season and last and but not least when it comes to the men is the news that Spanish pinner Angel Suarez will race for Commencal 100%.
New horizons for George Brannigan with the NS Bike UR Team
© NS Bikes UR Team
There's not been a whole lot of movement across teams on the women's side of downhill compared to last year. Norway's Mille Johnset has joined the ranks of Commencal 100% after leaving Atherton Racing, while current Junior World Champion Izabela Yankova of Bulgaria will be on a whole new team of youthful talent backed by Specialized and called Gen-S.
02
Cross-country
There hasn't been a great amount of team movement activity going into 2022, as the 2021 off-season was busy with athletes leaving for new teams ahead of the Olympics. That said there has been movement of younger riders in the U23 pool or just stepping up to the elite ranks.
Vlad Dascălu upgrades to Trek Factory Racing
Vlad Dascălu makes the jump up to the Trek Factory Racing having raced the last two seasons for the Italian-based Trek-Pirelli outfit.
Dascălu swept all before him in the U23 category and stepped up to racing Elite in the 2020 season. 2021 saw him find his feet at this level, finishing second at the World Cup race in Snowshoe to add to his fifth place in Leogang in June. There was also a fourth-place finish at World Championships in Val di Sole and a seventh at the Olympics for the Romanian.
Elsewhere at Trek Factory, Brit Evie Richards, Swiss Jolanda Neff and New Zealander Anton Cooper continue as senior riders, but Stéphane Tempier has exited the team. Americans Riley Amos and Maddie Munro get factory support at U23 level.
Loana Lecomte moves on from Massi to Canyon
France's Loana Lecomte was last year's breakout star on the women's Mercedes-Benz Cross-country Mountain Bike World Cup. She dominated the early part of the season, winning four consecutive World Cups on her way to the overall title. She did so on the Massi team, but she's now departed to join a new team backed with factory support from Canyon – Canyon CLLCTV XCO.
A new chapter begins in Loana Lecomte's blossoming career
© Canyon Bicucles
Frenchman Thomas Griot and German Luca Schwarzbauer will be Lecomte's team-mates on this new squad. Like it has done in downhill, Canyon also backs other teams in cross-country, having joined forces at the start of last year with Emily Batty to form Canyon MTB Racing.
Red Bull helmets for Martin Vidaurre and Kata Blanka Vas
Two up-and-coming talents in cross-country recieved Red Bull sponsorship over the off-season – Martin Vidaurre and Kata Blanka Vas. Vidaurre, who hails from Chile, is the current U23 world champion and has also won World Cup races at that level. He currently rides for the German-based Lexware Mountainbike Team.
Blanka Vas is a true multi-disciplinary bike athlete. The Hungarian competes in cross-country, cyclo-cross and on the road for the SD Works women's team. Her most impressive result on the mountain bike is fourth in Tokyo last year, while at the World Cup her racing has been at the U23 level, where she's podiumed five times. In cyclo-cross, Blanka Vas has already won a World Cup elite race, while on the road, her best result was the elite women's road race at the 2021 World Championships, where she finished fourth. This is one lady to look out for in cycling over the coming years.
Kate Blanka Vas is women's cycling's new multi-disciplinary talent
© Mark Somay/Red Bull Content Pool
Blanka Vas has impressive results in senior racing at just 20-years-old
© Mark Somay/Red Bull Content Pool
Cannondale adds Mona Mitterwallner
Cannondale, one of the strongest cross-country teams in the World Cup, has been significantly strengthened with the addition of Mona Mitterwallner. The Austrian rider is the latest U23 women's talent to step up to race elite and comes to this new level with an impressive record. Despite still being only 20, Mitterwallner won every round of the U23 World Cup in 2021 and also became U23 World and European champion.
When she raced for the first time at elite level, at the UCI Mountain Bike Marathon World Championships at the end of last season, she won that as well. The rest of the Cannondale roster remains unchanged, with Henrique Avancini, Simon Andreassen and Alan Hatherly.
Specialized Factory Racing bring Christopher Blevins and Haley Batten on board
Christopher Blevins will be displaying the famous world champion's rainbow jersey for Specialized Factory Racing in short track (XCC) races this year after joining Specialized from Trinity MTB. Also joining from Trinity is Haley Batten.
No change in bike for Blevins next season, but he will be on a new team
© Specialized Bikes
Batten will be flying the US flag alongside Blevins at Specialized
© Specialized Bikes
Elsewhere on the XCO scene...
As announced at the end of last season, Victor Koretzky signed for French road team B&B Hotels p/b KTM for 2022 and beyond, but the Frenchman will ride selected mountain bike races for his new team. His old team, Team KMC Orbea, have moved to bolster their squad in light of Koretzky's departure and that of Thomas Litchner. They have added Norwegian Erik Heagstad Belgian Pierre De Froidmont, Estonian Janika Loiv and the Dane Sebastian Fini to their squad.
Julien Absalon's Absolute Absalon team has been rebadged as BMC MTB Racing for 2022. The same senior riders at Absolute – Titouan Carod, Filippo Colombo and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot – continue at BMC.
Mexican Gerardo Ulloa, winner of the Nové Město short track race last season, joins Massi for the next couple of years, while promising Brit rider Isla Short has left the Orbea Factory Cross-Country team after just one year and has inked a deal with Santa Cruz's sister company Juliana.
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