MOUNTAIN BIKE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS PREVIEW: CANYON MEDAL PROSPECTS IN DOWNHILL AND CROSS-COUNTRY

For release on Thursday 27th August 2026: The battle for mountain bike’s rainbow stripes heads to Val di Sole in Italy this year with cross-country and downhill titles on the line.

Thirteen Canyon riders are aiming for glory in the Dolomites, including Mathieu van der Poel (pictured), who has set his sights on a Cross Country (XCO) World Championship title in his fourth discipline, plus defending women’s elite XCO champion Jenny Rissveds, and reigning German downhill champ Henri Kiefer (pictured below), who’ll be looking to go one better than his second place in 2025.

The cross-country riders will tackle a technically demanding 4 km course packed with tree roots, loose boulders, rock gardens, short switchbacks and 190 m of elevation.

Downhill riders will face a steep, gnarly 2 km course, widely considered to be one of the steepest and most punishing on the international race circuit.

With Canyon athletes representing their national teams rather than their trade teams, they’ll still be on their familiar race bikes. Cross-country riders will be racing on the new rocket-fast Lux World Cup CFR while the downhill riders will be sending it on the Sender CFR with each athlete’s bike being decked out in the colours of their country flags, such as Valentina Corvi's bike pictured here.

The action starts for Canyon on Thursday 27^th August with junior rider Noa Filippi (FR) in the Cross-Country (XCO) race, followed by U23 stars Thibaut Francois (ES) and Valentina Corvi (IT), and Elites Luca Schwarzbauer (DE), Jenny Rissveds (SW), Sam Gaze (NZ) and Puck Pieterse (NL, pictured) in the Elite short track (XCC) race.

Attention switches to Downhill on Friday 28th. Aletha Ostgaard (US), Henri Kiefer (DE), Luca Shaw (US), Troy Brosnan (AUS) and Marine Cabirou (FR) will be hoping to breeze through qualification before storming the finals on Saturday 29th.

The cross-country focus resumes on Sunday 30th with the U23 and Elite XCO races where Francois, Corvi, Schwarzbauer, Gaze, Pieterse and Rissveds will be back in action, along with the hotly anticipated MTB World Championships return of Mathieu van der Poel (NL), who will be aiming to add a coveted fourth jersey to his Road, Cyclocross and Gravel World Championship titles.

For all the latest up-to-the-minute information be sure to check out @canyon_MTB on Instagram, or to watch the racing action live with Canyon, visit the Pure Cycling Festival taking place in Koblenz this weekend.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. A full gallery of Canyon team bike images are available per discipline. See below for examples or click the links for more images.

Cross-country

Additional XC bike photos available here.

Downhill

Additional DH bike photos available here.