Training days at Leogang do not look like a race. Athletes move through their runs without urgency, pausing mid-track to study sections, rolling features at controlled pace, backing into corners they intend to square up properly in qualification. From the spectator zone above the Speedster track, it reads exploratory. It is not. Every rider on this mountain today is building a file that becomes a plan for Saturday.
The WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series opened Round 4 this morning in the Pinzgau valley of Salzburgerland, Austria, with the EPIC Bikepark Leogang hosting its 15th UCI MTB World Series event. The competition runs through Sunday. Four disciplines in four days — XCC on Friday, DH qualifying also on Friday with finals Saturday, XCO and Enduro on Sunday — making this one of only two venues on the 2026 calendar capable of hosting all four formats across a single long weekend. One mountain, four world cups.
The morning session ran XCO Women from 08:30, DHI Junior training concurrently, then XCO open training from 09:15, DHI Elite from 09:30, and XCO Men through to 10:45. The afternoon runs for the full Elite DH field set the tone for qualification's approach to the top section — where the entry to the Speedster's famous off-camber opening determines everything that follows.
The Speedster
Leogang's downhill course runs 2.5 kilometres from the summit of the Asitzkopf to the finish arena below the gondola station, reaching speeds up to 65 km/h on the fastest linking sections. The track is among the most-recognised courses in MTB for a reason: every one of its features has a name and a reputation.
The off-camber top section rewards commitment in corners most riders instinctively brake through. The Motorway is a high-speed linking section where riders build or bleed momentum before the forest drops. Rock gardens and root sections occupy the middle third — the technical core that punishes small errors at full race pace. At the bottom: Vali's Hölle, a steep, rutted sequence in the lower track named informally after the Austrian world champion who has made this section her signature.
The training-day footage from this morning's sessions suggests the track survived a wetter-than-usual May in good condition. Rock gardens are compact. The Motorway reads fast. Athletes working through the top section's off-camber exposure were entering wide and exiting controlled — the standard pattern on a well-known track where each athlete has already decided their line.
The Headline: Women's DH Closes Saturday
The structural change that defines Leogang 2026 before a single qualifying run is taken: for the first time in UCI Downhill World Cup history, the Elite Women's final is the last race of the weekend — the headline event that closes Saturday's finals programme.
This is overdue. The women's downhill has produced some of the most technically consequential racing in the sport across the last five years. The scheduling practice of running women's finals as pre-programme — before the men's draw, leaving the women's finish as setup rather than destination — has been a source of debate within the MTB community. Leogang is where it changes.
The women's final here features Vali Höll on home soil. The Austrian world champion and current UCI Downhill World Cup overall leader has won at Leogang before. The track's combination of technical upper-section demands and raw-speed lower zones suits her riding profile. The prospect of an Austrian winning the headline event of a competition in Austria in the 25th anniversary year of the bikepark she grew up riding is the kind of thing the weekend needs to actually deliver — narratives are easy, the Speedster is not.
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Vali Höll (Commencal Schwalbe by Les Orres): Home crowd, home track, current world champion, current World Cup overall leader. The pressure and the advantage arrive simultaneously.
Gracey Hemstreet (Norco Race Division): The Canadian has won here before. Hemstreet's technical precision on steep, off-camber terrain — exactly what Leogang's top section demands — positions her as the most likely podium threat to Höll.
Jackson Goldstone (Santa Cruz Syndicate): Hemstreet's fellow Canadian won the men's at Leogang in a previous round, with a riding style that keeps the Motorway honest and absorbs the rock garden without losing drive. Qualification will indicate whether his top section is clean enough to set a front-row start position.
Puck Pieterse (Alpecin-Deceuninck): For XCO, Pieterse has been the dominant reference in the women's field — winning with distance rather than margins, which is a signal that the new course design at Leogang may need to disrupt her more than a close race can. The new rock garden placement near the start/finish link adds uncertainty to a pattern she has otherwise managed well.
The XCO Redesign
The cross-country course at Leogang has been rebuilt for 2026 with a new rock garden close to the start/finish link and a heavier emphasis on natural trails and wooded descents in the middle sector. The redesign targets the discipline's recent trend toward power-circuit racing over technically demanding terrain.
The effect on preparation was visible in this morning's training: athletes spending more time on early, slow passes through the rock garden, mapping entry and exit lines, assessing the section's behaviour under accumulated lap fatigue. XCO riders, unlike their DH counterparts, cannot commit to a single chosen line — the racing requires adaptive routing under full effort across multiple laps. The new section changes the calculation.
The Enduro
Sunday's Enduro World Cup covers 71 kilometres across six stages with 2,000 metres of descending, including a brand-new stage added for the 2026 edition. The enduro format — timed stage racing across a multi-stage backcountry course — brings a different athlete profile to the mountain than either DH or XCO: riders calibrated for all-day mountain efforts and transition management between timed sections.
The enduro runs concurrently with Sunday's XCO on separate course systems. Athletes in both disciplines are managing independent race preparations through the weekend.
What to Watch This Weekend
Friday: XCC (sprint-format cross-country, the race everyone underestimates until they see it at full pace) and DH qualifications. Saturday: DH finals, with the Elite Women closing the day. Sunday: XCO World Cup and Enduro World Cup simultaneously. Four world cups, four days, one mountain.
The women's DH closing Saturday is the structural story of the weekend. What happens when Vali Höll takes her run on the Speedster as the final racer of the day — in front of a home crowd, in the first Women's headline slot in this event's history — is what the EPIC Bikepark's 25th-anniversary weekend will be remembered by.
For a guide to riding the EPIC Bikepark yourself, see our Leogang destination guide.