Cross-Country Mountain Bike Racing Is Heating Up In Other Countries
Some of the top Americans have been racing there too
During the winter months, when the UCI World Cup races are not taking place, there are some other lesser-known events taking place in various places around the world. One of our favorite places to check on what’s going on all over the world is the website xcodata.com. We checked it out last week, and we checked it out again today to see what big-name racers are getting a jump on the 2025 race action by competing in the races taking place in other countries.
We found that Americans Christopher Blevins, Kelsey Urban, and Gwendalyn Gibson have all been racing outside of the continental U.S. in the last two months.
Below are some of the recent results that we copied from the xcodata.com website:
The Tropical MTB Challenge -2 race took place in Puerto Rico, where America’s Gwendalyn Gibson was the top woman. If you want to know more about her, here’s a profile we did on her:
The following race took place in Chelva, Spain:
There were more racers who finished behind Blevins (who took 23rd), but we were just looking for the American racers who placed outside of the top three when we spotted his name. He’s America’s top-ranked XCO Elite male racer right now. We didn’t see any other top male American racers in those results.
If you don’t know where Banyoles is located, it’s located near Girona, Spain, which lies just south of Andorra, where a number of top racers like to spend their winters in Europe. You can see Girona and Andorra on the map below.
We also included the weather information for the mountain bike race in Banyoles, which was also shown on the XCODATA website. For Americans not familiar with European temperatures, the 10-degree Celsius (Centigrade) temperature is equal to 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
The following maps show the race took place in Europe.
(Maps courtesy of Google Maps)
The xcodata.com website also lets you check on the makeup of the different teams. It also lets you check on the individual results of many of the riders whose names appear on the website. It’s a handy site for people who want to get an idea of who the up-and-coming racers are this year.
For instance, below are some of the results that xcodata.com shows for some of the members of the Specialized Factory Racing team so far this year:
