Round 4 of the UCI Mountain Bike World Series at Saalfelden-Leogang produced its enduro winners today. Jesse Melamed and Ella Conolly took the men's and women's UCI Enduro World Cup races at the Epic Bikepark — a result on the men's side that adds another marquee to Melamed's 2026 season under the Canyon CLLCTV Factory Team banner, and a result on the women's side that confirms what the Round 4 enduro storyline had been pointing at since the field arrived in Austria.
The Leogang course this year reached its full design — six stages, 71 kilometres of singletrack — and the result delivered the field-test the bikepark's 25-year anniversary edition deserved.
Conolly Wins the Venue She Already Owned
Ella Conolly, the British rider who arrived at Round 4 as defending overall champion and the rider who won Leogang last year, defended the venue. The women's enduro at this round across the past two seasons has produced a narrow but consistent pattern: Conolly reads the course the way the course wants to be ridden, and the rest of the field manages a gap that doesn't close.
The 2026 season's overall question for Conolly was whether her 2025 title was a campaign-long form ride or, in part, a venue-specific product of a few World Cup courses that suit her riding particularly well. Leogang doesn't fully answer that question — the venue suiting her is part of the data, not its negation — but the result confirms that the form profile she carries through the back half of 2026 starts here in defensible position.
The challengers behind Conolly raced for the podium spots that produce the season's overall points table. The detailed results of the women's enduro will surface across the next 24 hours as the UCI publishes the round summary.
Melamed Takes It on the Men's Side
Jesse Melamed's Round 4 result is the season's clearest statement so far. The Canadian rider, racing for Canyon CLLCTV Factory Team in 2026, has built a season profile that the rest of the men's enduro field is now reading from. Leogang under the Round 4 format that combines six stages across the Epic Bikepark produced the result the form book was pointing at.
The Round 4 men's overall standings going into Leogang were led by Slawomir Lukasik. Melamed's win here compresses the overall gap and reshapes the back half of the season's title chase. The detailed margin of Melamed's victory and the supporting podium will be published in the UCI summary; the headline is that the season's defining men's enduro rider has been confirmed.
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Join ZealZagFollow us on InstagramDownhill Q1: Cabirou + Maples on Top
The downhill Q1 qualifying ran clean across both fields. The women's session produced a top three of Marine Cabirou (4:00.576), Anna Newkirk (4:01.495), and Vali Höll (4:02.832) — three sub-4:03 runs separated by 2.3 seconds in a course that historically produces wider gaps. Höll's position in third is the read the rest of the field will use heading into Saturday's Q2 and Sunday's Finals.
The men's Q1 produced a top two of Dylan Maples (3:21.243) and Ethan Craik (3:22.894). The 1.6-second gap between first and second at this stage of the weekend means the course is running tight and the Finals on Sunday will likely produce a result inside a 2–3 second margin from top to fourth.
The Saturday Q2 will set the start list order for Sunday's Finals. The qualifying-round insights from today's Q1 already suggest that the men's Finals will produce a tighter result than recent Leogang downhills.
What the Round 4 Story Becomes
Two storylines define the back half of Round 4:
- Sunday's downhill Finals will produce the men's and women's results that the 2026 DH overall standings will read from for the next two rounds. Höll's position behind Cabirou and Newkirk in qualifying is the women's storyline; the tight Maples–Craik margin is the men's.
- The cross-country format — XCO and XCC Short Track — runs through Saturday and Sunday and produces the season's third major XCO result of the year. The form book has not committed to a clear favourite at this round; the venue suits riders who can climb consistently and descend the Leogang trails with confidence.
The 25-year Epic Bikepark anniversary edition of Round 4 has delivered the enduro story it needed. The next two days will fill in the downhill and cross-country picture that the rest of the 2026 calendar reads from.