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Jackie Tyson

Paris Olympics: Women's Mountain Bike Cross Country - Preview

Loana Lecomte Haley Batten Pauline FerrandPrévot Puck Pieterse Olympics Paris World Cup Olympics (Event) Paris Olympics France

Picture by Thomas Maheux/SWpix.com - 12/08/2023 - 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships - MTB Cross Country - Glentress Forest, Peebles, Scotland - Elite Women Cross-country Olympic - Pauline Ferrand Prevot - France.

Mountain biking returns to the Olympic Games for an eighth consecutive time, with the cross-country medals decided at the Élancourt Hill venue outside Paris for elite women on Saturday, July 28, a day before the men.

A forecast of rain could change the complexity of the course for the women like it did three years ago at the Tokyo Games, which left most of the favourites well behind a Swiss podium sweep led by Jolanda Neff.

The women’s race is wide open this time out as Neff recently withdrew due to a lingering illness, leaving Alessandra Keller as the only Swiss rider this time. Keller will be one of the favourites, as she is the leader in the UCI World Cup XCO rankings through the first six races.

Her top competition will come from a pair of French riders, world champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and world’s silver medalist Loana Lecomte as well as Dutch rider Puck Pieterse and the US duo of Haley Batten and Savilia Blunk.

There are 36 riders on the start list for Saturday, which is the same number for men on Sunday. In the inaugural appearance of XCO in the Olympic Games in 1996 in Atlanta, there were 27 women in the race as opposed to 38 men. Paola Pezzo of Italy won the first women's gold medal, with a second victory four years later in Sydney, she remains the only two-time Olympic XCO winner.

The races will take place at Élancourt Hill on a 4.4km course that includes twisting gravel paths, a technical rock garden and a challenging climb. After an opening lap of 2.2km, which avoids the one major climb, there will be multiple passes on the main circuit, with 110 metres of elevation gain each time. The highest point of the course offers views in the distance of the Eiffel Tower, which is located about 25km away.

Paris Olympics women's mountain bike favourites

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Loana Lecomte (France)

Loana Lecomte (left) accepts the XCO silver medal at UCI Mountain Bike World Championships alongside France teammate Pauline Ferrand-Prevot, who won gold (Image credit: Alex Broadway/SWpix.com)

France could easily land both riders, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Loana Lecomte, on the home podium, and either could take the gold. The two rocketed across last year’s Glasgow World Championships XCO course to go one-two, Ferrand-Prévot earning rainbow stripes for a fifth time in MTB. She also has world titles across multiple cycling disciplines in her storied career - cyclocross, gravel, road and marathon mountain bike.

This is Ferrand-Prévot’s final season competing in mountain biking, as she will turn her focus back to road racing. She finished 10th in Tokyo in the XCO race, but the driving motivation this time at her fourth Games is to be “Olympic champion at home”. She has only competed at two World Cup events this year, Nové Město and Val De Sole, but won both times.

Lecomte has a single victory on the World Cup circuit this year at Crans-Montana, and skipped the Les Gets round in early July for a training camp in the mountains. She was a dominate winner last year at the mountain bike Test Event at Élancourt Hill, Ferrand-Prévot finishing third.

With her silver medal behind Ferrand-Prévot at the World Championships, Lecomte has proved she can perform well on the big stage, giving France options for the gold.

Puck Pieterse (Netherlands)

Puck Pieterse on her way to third place in cross-country race at 2023 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships (Image credit: Thomas Maheux/SWpix.com)

Puck Pieterse is a rising star across multiple disciplines in cycling, including a past U23 world champion in cyclocross and the reigning European champion in cross-country MTB at just 22 years of age. She is ranked second in the World Cup standings of XCO, boosted by her win in the final tune-up for the Olympic Games in Les Gets, France, where she excelled on climbs and through the mud to sail away with a solo victory more than two minutes ahead of chasers.

She had two years remaining to race at the U23 level in MTB, but decided to move to the elite level last year with her sights set on Paris, and it paid dividends. At the World Championships last year she earned the bronze behind the French duo of Ferrand-Prévot and Lecomte. She looks to be the first women’s rider from The Netherlands to earn a medal of any colour at the Olympic Games in mountain biking.

Haley Batten and Savilia Blunk (USA)

Haley Batten at the Cross-country Test Event in 2023 (Image credit: Thomas SAMSON / AFP / Getty Images)

Similar to the home French team, Team USA brings double firepower to the cross-country with Haley Batten and Savilia Blunk, ranked third and fourth, respectively in the World Cup rankings. Batten makes her second Olympic appearance, finishing ninth in Tokyo, while Blunk makes her debut.

Batten has three podiums this World Cup season, including a victory at Araxá, Brazil. Blunk won the short track race in Les Gets, and has three podiums in cross-country.

It has been 12 years since the US has come away with a bronze medal at the Olympic Games in mountain biking, and both Batten and Blunk are looking to make history with a first-time gold.

Alessandra Keller (Switzerland)

Born the same year that mountain biking made its entry into the Olympic Games, Alessandra Keller comes to Paris as the UCI World Cup leader in cross-country. She won the women’s U23 world championship in 2018, and has finished fifth the last two years at Worlds in the elite race.

While she leads the World Cup rankings this season due to consistency - three World Series podiums and three top 10s - she does not have a victory on the long courses yet, only taking a pair of victories in the short track competitions. With Neff out of the race now, she will have to make the most of her solo endeavour.