The 2025 WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series only just returned from its six-month winter break, but the action keeps on coming this weekend with the second of Araxá, Minas-Gerais’s back-to-back UCI Cross-country World Cup rounds.

 After a six-month break, the WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series is back with a bang as the Endurance contests open their 2025 accounts with two weekends of consecutive racing in Araxá, Minas-Gerais, Brazil.

The dust might have just settled on the Brazilian venue’s red clay course, but riders are readying themselves to go again on the tropical terrain – a second race weekend in quick succession offering those with disappointing season openers the chance to make immediate amends, while also enabling those who came out on top to reemphasize their dominance.

The racing won’t be a foregone conclusion, either. Course designers are mixing things up for the UCI Cross-country Olympic (XCO) World Cup course, with new features and trails for the riders to get to grips with ahead of Saturday’s finals.

A SPELLBINDING SOUTH AMERICAN SHOW

Last weekend’s racing saw Araxá prove that its 2024 UCI World Cup debut was no fluke. Then, fans witnessed a thrilling finale in the men’s elite XCO race, and while the 2025 season opener didn’t feature a four-up sprint for the line, each contest was an intriguing spectacle that showed the various ways you can win a cross-country race.

In the women’s elite XCO race, Samara Maxwell (Decathlon Ford Racing Team) made history by clinching her first elite UCI XCO World Cup win – the 23-year-old New Zealander biding her time in the lead group before creating a small gap on the seventh lap that the chasing Nicole Koller (Ghost Factory Racing) and Savilia Blunk (Decathlon Ford Racing Team) weren’t able to close.

Maxwell’s win also meant she was eligible to select her own career number – a new feature for the 2025 WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series. She opted for #66, although as the current UCI XCO World Cup leader, she’ll be racing with the #1 plate this weekend.

Meanwhile, in the men’s elite, teamwork made the dream work – Victor Koretzky (Specialized Factory Racing) and Christopher Blevins (Specialized Factory Racing) time-trialled their way to an insurmountable advantage over the chasing pack before the Frenchman threw down a race-winning surge on the penultimate lap that Blevins couldn’t come back from.

SAME AGAIN OR ALL CHANGE AT THE TOP?

While the XCO course is undergoing some modifications for round two, the riders won’t be going into it completely blind come Saturday’s finals and will have had time to practice and get up to speed with any tricky new technical areas.

When picking favourites, it’s therefore worth looking at who appeared to be at the peak of their powers in hot and humid conditions in Brazil.

Few would write off Maxwell’s chances of doing the Araxá double. The Kiwi has shown she can beat the best in her second elite season and appears to be in the form of her life after a near-perfect weekend where she also finished second in the UCI Cross-country Short Track (XCC) World Cup.

Those looking to prevent the 23-year-old from going back-to-back include the riders who shared the podium with her last Sunday – Koller and Blunk – while the reigning UCI XCO and XCC overall series winner, Alessandra Keller (Thömus Maxon), has shown she’s back to her consistent best following surgery at the end of last season.

Riders with points to prove meanwhile include Jenny Rissveds (Canyon CLLCTV XCO), Loana Lecomte (BMC Factory Racing) and Sina Frei (Specialized Factory Racing), who will all be hoping for better next time out.

In the men’s elite field, it’s hard to look beyond the Specialized Factory Racing show, with Koretzky appearing to have the edge over Blevins in the longer format of the XCO.

The rest of the pack will have to find a way of disrupting the pair’s dominance in Araxá, and it might require the Swiss trio of Lars Forster (Thömus Maxon), Nino Schurter (Scott-SRAM MTB Racing Team) and Filippo Colombo (Scott-SRAM MTB Racing Team) – who finished fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively – to form an alliance along national lines to prevent Koretzky from running away with an early lead in the overall series.

Elsewhere, Charlie Aldridge (Cannondale Factory Racing) and Riley Amos (Trek Factory Racing-Pirelli) will be looking to make amends, having failed to finish on Sunday, while Simon Andreassen (Orbea Fox Factory Team) shouldn’t be overlooked – the Dane is the only other rider present who has won at the venue.

In the XCC meanwhile, the course remains the same and racing is likely to be just as tight. Evie Richards (Trek Factory Racing-Pirelli) and Blevins came out on top in round one, and enter this Friday’s races as favourites, but expect opposition from Koretzky, Mathis Azzaro (Origine Racing Division) and Dario Lillo (Giant Factory Off-Road Team - XC) in the men’s elite, and Maxwell, Keller and Kira Böhm (Cube Factory Racing) in the women’s elite.

Racing gets underway in Araxá on Friday with the U23 UCI XCC World Cup – full schedule and events details are available here.