From Nino Schurter’s farewell to Samara Maxwell’s rise, 2025 was the year mountain bike racing’s power centers changed hands.
Piper Albrecht
The 2025 UCI Cross-Country Mountain Bike World Cup season was the longest and most far-reaching in recent memory: 10 rounds across three continents and nine countries, from the humid heat of Brazil in April to the cool forests of Canada in October.
It was a season defined not by domination but by evolution. The familiar forces were still there, but so too were new names demanding attention. For the first time in years, neither the men’s nor women’s fields had a standout rider who ruled from start to finish. Instead, the story of 2025 was one of persistence, adaptability, and the narrowing gap between victory and defeat.
As Christopher Blevins (Specialized Factory Racing) and Samara Maxwell (Decathlon-Ford Racing) claimed their first-ever XCO overall titles – each earned through consistency rather than control – the sport itself seemed to shift beneath their wheels. In the XCC, things were a bit different: Blevins doubled up his overall title while winning six of the 10 rounds, including a streak of five straight to start the season. On the women’s side, Evie Richards (Trek Factory Racing-Pirelli) reasserted herself as the woman to beat in short track, but Jenny Rissveds’ (Canyon CLLCTV) late-season surge – with victories in the last four rounds – brought her just short of Richards’ season total.
Opinion: Nino Schurter isn’t just retiring, he’s leaving a blueprint
From hardtails to dropper posts, Absalon to Pidcock, Schurter defined – and then re-defined – what it meant to be an XCO racer.
In the background, an era quietly closed. Nino Schurter (Scott-SRAM), the greatest men’s rider in World Cup history, took his final bows, his farewell in Lenzerheide casting a long shadow over a season that otherwise felt like the start of something new.
With the dust finally settled and a new generation rising, 2025 will be remembered as a season where the balance of power began to tilt toward mountain biking’s next chapter.
Women’s Elite: Maxwell proves the value of consistency
The 2025 women’s XCO season wasn’t just a sequence of races; it was a narrative of resurgence, and a season where experience battled hunger, comebacks and breakthroughs colliding on the world stage. Starting in the April heat of Brazil, this was a year that reminded everyone just how deep and unpredictable women’s mountain biking has become, especially with Olympic champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s move to focus on road racing, which culminated in a near-immediate achievement of her objective: to win the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
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