Paris Olympic Games 2024: XCO mountain biking course preview as Team Great Britain's Tom Pidcock looks to defend gold
Published 25/07/2024 at 13:13 GMT+1
Team Great Britain's Tom Pidcock will look to defend his XCO mountain biking gold medal when the event takes place at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The men's event is on Monday, July 29, starting from 12.10pm, while the women's race is 24 hours earlier. We take a look at the 4.4km course in Elancourt, with the relentless route including 110m of elevation gain per lap.
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Video credit: TNT Sports
The only off-road cycling discipline of the Olympics will take place on a 4.4km course in Élancourt, a small town situated in Paris’ southwestern suburbs.
The relentless route is fast and physical throughout and includes 110m of elevation gain per lap.
In addition to sharp, switch-backing single-track and adrenaline-fuelled descents, the course has several technical features like rock gardens and jumps that could prove decisive in the race for gold.
While Paris is world renowned as the setting of the finalé of road cycling’s biggest race – the Tour de France – the French capital is less well known for its mountain biking.
But this summer, the City of Love will also be hosting off-road riders as it welcomes the discipline of cross-country mountain biking as part of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics schedule.
Unlike BMX freestyle’s La Concorde urban park venue, an iconic landmark of Paris isn’t being transformed into an Olympics-worthy mountain biking track though.
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Instead, athletes will be heading 30km southwest of the capital to the town of Élancourt, and in particular Élancourt Hill.
At 231m, it’s the highest point in the Paris region, and it’s reportedly possible to see landmarks of the city’s skyline, such as the Eiffel Tower on clear days.
A former sandstone quarry-turned-landfill that was regenerated into a public park in the 1980s, the artificial hill was already home to a network of mountain bike trails when it was chosen as a Paris 2024 venue back in 2021.
Since then, South African course designer Nick Floros has been put to work crafting a track fit for the Olympic Games.
Floros has been responsible for the cross-country Olympic (XCO) mountain bike courses for Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, as well as the UCI World Championships in Glasgow 2023, and his creation in Élancourt looks set to provide the ultimate proving ground in the race for gold.
The main course is 4.4km long, while its start loop is 2.2km and covers a lot of the same ground as the main course.
The number of laps won’t be decided until the afternoon before the first day of competition, but each race is expected to last between one and two hours.
Each lap features a 110m elevation gain across numerous calf-burning climbs, and fast, adrenaline-fuelled descents.
Although the final Paris 2024 course is yet to be confirmed, it is sure to be a relentless and physically demanding race if last year’s test event is anything to go by.
After a wide-open gravel start/finish straight, riders get funnelled into a steep climb, which makes a fast start imperative.
From here, there is a smorgasbord of features, including flowy undulating sections, rock gardens, jumps, log-lipped step-downs and berms that will assess the rider’s technical abilities. The standout is a chunky rock garden about two-thirds of the way through the lap, where multiple lines provide riders with faster, albeit harder paths.
The majority of the course is set on hardpack gravel, although there is a shorter section of rooty and mulchy woodland, which could become interesting if there is any rain.
At the 2023 test event, France’s Loana Lecomte and Victor Koretzky came away with the wins, but French domination isn’t guaranteed at Paris 2024 with Tom Pidcock (Great Britain), Nino Schurter (Switzerland) and Puck Pieterse (the Netherlands) among the favourites for mountain bike gold at the Olympic Games.
The women’s event starts at 12:10 UK time on Sunday, July 28, while the men’s will be decided from 12:10 UK time on Monday, July 29.
discovery+ is the streaming home of the Olympic Games, and the only place you can watch every moment of Paris 2024 this summer.
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