The short track cross-country format takes everything that makes XCO compelling and compresses it. Fewer kilometres, more laps, the crowd interaction constant, the racing beginning at race pace rather than building toward it. Lenzerheide's 10th anniversary edition opened its competitive programme with exactly this, and the athletes who answered the 18:00 and 18:50 start guns on Friday evening in the Graubünden Alps delivered the racing the format promises.
Women: Rissveds Beats the Series Leader
Jenny Rissveds entered Lenzerheide as a name that doesn't need introduction on the cross-country circuit. The Swedish rider — Rio 2016 Olympic XCO gold medalist, multiple World Cup winner — arrived here as the woman who had already won the most recent XCC round, and who had a particular reason to target Friday's short track: Evie Richards, the current UCI XCC World Cup overall series leader, was in the field.
The two riders battled through the early laps of the shortened Lenzerheide circuit — a course the 2026 event organisers have deliberately contracted versus prior years, specifically to increase lap frequency and tighten the racing. More laps means more moments. In a series of high-pace exchanges that ran through the penultimate lap, Rissveds found the gap and went.
Once she went clear, Richards couldn't close it. The Swede crossed in Lenzerheide for her second consecutive XCC World Cup win and the fifth of her career. Evie Richards took second. Blöchlinger third.
The XCC overall standings tighten. Richards still leads the series but with a narrower margin than she held entering Lenzerheide.
Men: Koretzky on His Title's Home Ground
Victor Koretzky arrived at Lenzerheide wearing the UCI XCC World Champion's rainbow stripes — the jersey that marks him as the current best in the discipline globally. The Frenchman rides for Specialized Factory Racing, the programme that has been one of the XC circuit's strongest across the last decade.
World Championship form and World Cup form are distinct quantities. The ability to transfer the former into the latter — race after race, course after course, across a season that runs from March through September — is what separates the top XCC athletes from each other. Koretzky's Lenzerheide win confirmed that the transfer is operating in 2026.
The shortened course that Lenzerheide used today suits the characteristics of an XCC World Champion: high end power, ability to respond to surges, explosive short-duration efforts repeated across multiple laps. Koretzky used the field density in the early laps and made his margin on the Lenzerheide trail section before the final circuit's arena crossing.
He won. The rainbow jersey stays busy.
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Join ZealZagFollow us on InstagramWhat the Shortened Course Did
The 2026 Lenzerheide XCC course is shorter per lap than previous editions. The organisers announced this change explicitly as a tactic to increase racing frequency — shorter laps mean more opportunities for attacks, more crosses in front of the crowd, more decision points per hour of competition. On Friday evening's evidence, it worked. The opening laps of both races produced immediate selection pressure rather than the gradual build that longer-lap courses allow.
The consequence: whoever couldn't sustain the opening pace was dropped earlier. The winner's advantage at the end of the women's race reflected a sustained lead from the penultimate lap onward, not a late-race sprint that anyone could contest. Rissveds earned the distance.
What Comes Next: XCO and DHI
The short track is Friday's result. The weekend is not finished.
Saturday, June 20 — XCO Olympic Distance. The full cross-country race, the season's championship-qualification priority event. For athletes positioned near the series cutoff for World Championship seeding, XCO points matter more than XCC. The shortened Lenzerheide XCO circuit — confirmed as tighter than recent editions — runs individual laps of roughly 4.5–5 kilometres and approximately 250–300m of climbing each, with the arena section cycling through every lap. Goldstone has been the DH name this week; Koretzky has now stamped the XC name. XCO Saturday will produce its own story.
Sunday, June 21 — DHI Finals. Jackson Goldstone (Santa Cruz Syndicate) arrived at Lenzerheide as the men's DH series leader after his Leogang Round 4 win two weekends ago. Vali Holl leads the women's downhill season standings. The DH final runs down the Lenzerheide track with the finish bowl as its centrepiece — the step-down jump that sends riders airborne into the arena line of sight, one of the World Cup calendar's most watchable single moments.
For athletes visiting to watch the weekend, the Bike Kingdom Park's network of trails is open for riding between event sessions. For a full guide to the terrain and how to access it, see our Bike Kingdom Lenzerheide route guide. For the DH qualifying and event context published yesterday, see our Lenzerheide World Cup field report.