Outside talks to mountain biker Kate Courtney about Leadville, the World Cup, and whether or not she’s interested in the U.S. gravel cycling scene
Kate Courtney celebrates her Leadville Trail 100 win (Photo: Allied Cycle Works)
Published September 5, 2025 06:27AM
What was the best part of winning Colorado’s Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race?
A few answers come to Kate Courtney’s mind. On August 6, Courtney, the most decorated American mountain biker of her generation, smashed the event’s record by nearly ten minutes in her debut, completing the 100-mile course in 6 hours, 48 minutes, 55 seconds. She won it with her friends and family looking on—a rarity for Courtney, who predominantly races overseas. And Courtney rode to victory just two months after a broken wrist forced her to completely rethink her 2025 racing schedule.
“Leadville wasn’t even on my radar at the start of the season,” Courtney told Outside. “The significance was less about the win and the record, and more about the race bringing out the type of riding that I’ve been trying to get out of myself for a while.”
OK, so what was the worst part of winning Leadville? I’m going to go ahead and answer for Kate Courtney here. It was being asked the same question, over and over again, by pesky cycling journalists like yours truly:
Are you a gravel racer now?
“I do one race—and it’s a mountain biking race—and the number one question I get is ‘are you a gravel racer now?’ It makes no sense,” Courtney, who is 29, told me on a recent videoconference call. I paused and asked the same question, just in a different way. Courtney laughed. 
Courtney set a new course record at the Leadville Trail 100 (Photo: Dan Hughes/Life Time)
“I’m a little sensitive about the gravel thing,” she continued. “It’s the wrong question. ‘Are you this now? Are you that now?’ Why can’t I just be a great bike racer?”
It’s a fair point, and one that’s worth unpacking. Because the answer may shed some light on the next chapter of Courtney’s racing career.
Courtney’s Place in U.S. Cycling History
For those unfamiliar with Kate Courtney, a quick history lesson. In 2018 she etched her name in American cycling history by winning the cross-country mountain biking world championships at age 23, her first year in the elite pro ranks.
It was a massive moment for U.S. cycling fans. Americans invented the mountain bike in the seventies, but in the nineties and aughts, our best off-road racers were quickly surpassed by Europeans. Courtney’s win ended a 17-year drought by elite American cross-country mountain bikers at the world championships.
The win vaulted Courtney into the spotlight—the Stanford grad who got her start in California’s high school cycling league, spoke with the eloquence of a CEO, and uploaded her jaw-dropping fitness routines to Instagram. In 2019, she graced the cover of Outside magazine.
Kate Courtney racing the 2019 world championships (Photo: Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)
Courtney followed the big win up with another accolade—in 2019 she won mountain biking’s World Cup series.
“To the the outside world those results probably seem like they came out of nowhere, and those big media moments are like the only thing you remember, but I had raced pretty much at that level for a few years beforehand,” Courtney said. “From then until the 2020 season I was consistently at the front of international races.”
And then? Injuries and setbacks, success and failure. Courtney qualified for the 2020 Olympics, but finished a distant 15th. In 2020 she suffered a concussion; a year later she broke her arm. The next generation of American mountain bikers surpassed her. Haley Batten, the youngster Courtney once mentored, topped her on the World Cup, eventually winning Olympic silver in 2024. Courtney, meanwhile, didn’t quality for Team USA for the 2024 Games.
Kate Courtney, the first American to win an overall UCI Mountain Bike World Cup cross-country series title in 17 years (Bartosz Wolinski/Red Bull Content Pool)
“There were a combination of factors that have prevented me from accessing my highest level of performance,” Courtney said. “It’s not so unique to me; a lot of athletes have ups and downs, especially when you reach that peak early in your career. It’s a different challenge to try to stay at that level or to replicate that for multiple seasons.”
Courtney spent years trying to recapture her mojo. She changed coaches and switched bike sponsors. She left her European team in 2024, and in 2025 launched her own team with her own sponsors, called She Sends Racing.
“You try things until they work, and I’ve been on a bit of a journey to recapture that at the World Cup level again,” she said. “All of the changes have been about me trying to unlock that performance level that I know I’m capable of.”
And then in 2025, another crash, another broken bone, and a disrupted World Cup campaign. In the spring she returned to California to rest and recover. For her first race back, Courtney chose a new race to begin her comeback: the Leadville Trail 100.
A Race that Unlocked Her Ability
A World Cup cross-country race and the Leadville Trail 100 are akin to comparing the 10,000 meters to an ultramarathon.
World Cup mountain bike races last just over an hour, and are incredible tests of all-out effort and fight. Most are held in Europe. Seventy of the world’s fastest racers elbow each other as they battle for every inch of trail around a short course with steep climbs, punishing descents, and the occasional sheer drop-off. One bobble, one slip, and a cyclist may be passed by a dozen others.
“There is something in me that has the deep love of these races and the deep intensity around it and what it demands. Ninety nine percent isn’t enough, you have to give 100,” Courtney said. “Those are some of the most rewarding days I’ve had in the sport—and also my most frustrating because it’s so hard to stay on that edge.”
Leadville, meanwhile, takes all day to unfold. The professionals share the 100-mile course with weekend warriors. The course isn’t very technical—some athletes compete on gravel bicycles. Oftentimes, the fastest pros spend much of the day racing by themselves, squeezing every ounce of endurance from their bodies over the course of hours.
That was the case for Courtney. After dropping the defending champion, Melissa Rollins, on the course’s signature Columbine climb, she rode by herself at top speed for 55 miles.
But at Leadville, Courtney raced in front of screaming fans, TV cameras showing the race live, and—perhaps most importantly—her family.
Courtney spent much of the Leadville race riding by herself (Photo: Dan Hughes/Life Time)
“It had these elements that make me want to perform in a race—challenging terrain, high level of competition, my family was there,” Courtney said. “It was in an environment that was so different from what I’m used to that it unlocked the mental side of competition.”
There’s another big difference between the two formats. World Cups and the world championships are qualifying events for the Olympics. The Leadville Trail 100 is not. Instead, it is part of a series of ultra-endurance gravel cycling events called the Life Time Grand Prix, which offers $380,000 in prize cash and live broadcasts of races. In recent years, these mass-participant events, such as Kansas’s Unbound Gravel, have gained global attention and even attracted top professionals from the Tour de France and mountain biking World Cup.
Racers like Courtney can now earn a decent living on the series—and they don’t have to spend half the year racing abroad. Former World Cup mountain bikers Keegan Swenson and Sofia Gomez-Villafañe have extended their careers in cycling on the Life Time circuit, as have a handful of others.
“There’s a huge media opportunity to race in the U.S., and Life Time has done a great job with the series,’ she added. “What I think is cool is there’s now the option to race these events.”
But having the option and taking it are two completely different things. When I asked Courtney if the Leadville victory convinced her to trade the World Cup for the Life Time series, or to target big gravel events like Unbound Gravel, she pushed back.
“Unbound is a flat gravel race over 200 miles. I’m a racer who excels at anaerobic climbs,” she said. “It’s not my current plan or desire. It’s been fun to watch the level rise, but they’re not races I’d put as super goals for me.”
The Crossroads
Courtney will turn 30 in October—hardly old for a World Cup racer, but one step closer to the finish of her career than the start. As our conversation unfolded, she admitted that she has felt fatigued by the World Cup circuit, and the year-in, year-out chase of victories and podium finishes.
“Since I was 16 years old I’ve lived and died by UCI points on the World Cup,” she said. “That requires this dedication to certain events and certain performances. It is this structure that becomes a big organizing principal of your life. Having this injury in 2025 forced me to think about what I want out of racing.”
The wrist injury, recovery, and decision to race Leadville showed her that there are events outside of the European racing circuit that can motivate her to reach her best. She told me that the entire ordeal has convinced her to branch out from the World Cup chase in 2026 and beyond.
“I’m curious about having more freedom to pick and choose other races,” she said. “As the World Cup season expands—we now have ten races and they want to add more in the future—it’s a long time to be away. That’s never brought the best out of me, being gone for that much of the year.”
What, exactly, her racing schedule looks like next year is still up in the air. Courtney will still race World Cups, but she will also target an ultra endurance race or two as well. And yeah, Courtney may dabble in a gravel race as well. Now that she controls her own destiny as manager of her own team, she has the power to choose.
“The goal is to be able to race in the way I know I’m capable of racing at any race—at a World Cup, gravel race, endurance mountain bike race—and that is what I’m working towards,” she said.
But trading the World Cup series for the North American gravel scene isn’t the Shangri-La that Courtney is after—not yet, anyway. She wants to seek out races that create, as she called it, a “Leadville moment,” but not commit herself to a different points chase on a different series.
Hence the sensitivity to questions over the potential pivot to gravel racing.
“In the same way that I don’t want to be just a World Cup racer who can’t do anything else and has to maintain my ranking, I’m also not planning to just race gravel in the U.S.,” Courtney said. “Trying to put a box around your racing limits athletes.”
So, while Kate Courtney hasn’t completely chosen which crossroad to take, there’s good chance that, in 2026, she will pedal in a different direction.