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In a major shift, Decathlon will phase out its RockRider brand, and Zipp enters the big-wheel chat.
Van Rysel, Alex Hunt
The XC World Series might have only just wrapped up, but it is already time to look at how the 2027 paddock is shaping up. The first team to announce changes ahead of 2027 is Decathlon-Ford Racing, which will be making big changes to the bikes and equipment the team rolls on next year.
For the past three seasons, Decathlon-Ford has been riding RockRider’s Race 940 S XC platform, which represented the pinnacle of the French sporting retailer’s performance mountain bike line. Historically, Decathlon has sold mass-market bikes in its Triban line, and split its performance lines between Van Rysel for drop-bar and RockRider for mountain bikes. However, with Decathlon increasingly investing in its performance cycling programmes under the Van Rysel name and consolidating the Triban line under Van Rysel, and it was becoming increasingly odd to see mountain biking left out on its own.
Fresh for 2027, RockRider will be replaced by Van Rysel, bringing all of Decathlon’s range-topping performance lines under one single banner. But don’t be fooled: this isn’t a case of swapping the RockRider logos for Van Rysel decals. The announcement comes with the arrival of the RCR-XC, an entirely new platform. And Van Rysel has come out swinging, putting aerodynamics front and centre in its approach to XC performance, and betting everything on 32″ wheels.
The 32″ revolution requires reinventing more than the wheel
The jump from 29″ to 32″ is forcing brands to rethink everything from standards to testing, even as the industry has yet to make a convincing case for the benefits.
Two years in the making, exclusively 32”
For anyone expecting Van Rysel to come in playing it safe is likely in for a shock. The headline-grabbing detail is that there will not be a 29” RCR-XC; instead, the brand is putting all of its chips on 32”. This is significant because, so far, the 32″ bikes we’ve seen at the top level of XC have largely been developed alongside, or closely related to, existing 29″ platforms.
Scott’s 32-inch Spark closely resembles the newly launched 29-inch Spark RC, while Trek’s 32-inch prototype appears to be built around the same platform as its 29-inch prototype. Even KTM’s 32-inch bike, which Andreas Seewald rode to the 2026 XC Marathon World Championship, closely resembles the company’s Scarp 29-inch race bike.
Van Rysel, however, has taken a different approach. The RCR-XC has been designed from the ground up around the larger wheel, with the brand saying its engineers started to consider 32″ wheels shortly after the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
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