Blunk and Boichis Take Short-Track Glory in the Alps at La Thuile XCC

The Short Track gets the weekend started. At La Thuile, it gets it started 1,441 metres above sea level, on a loop that sends riders past rocky natural features and through Alpine singletrack at the kind of pace that makes the XCC what it is: twenty minutes of full-gas racing where the margin between winning and sixth can compress to half a wheel.

Friday's Elite races produced two clear winners. Savilia Blunk — American, Decathlon Ford Racing Team — took the women's title in what coverage from trackside described as hectic bar-to-bar battles. Adrien Boichis won the men's race. Both victories came through fights rather than breakaways.

What the XCC Is

The Cross-Country Short Track is the format most accessible to a spectator who has never watched mountain bike racing before. The course is shorter than the Olympic XCO — typically two to three kilometres of natural terrain mixed with spectator-friendly features — and the Elite race runs for roughly twenty minutes of flat-out effort. Mass start. No individual gaps to manage, no pacing strategy, no conserving anything. The XCC rewards explosive power and the ability to hold position in a compressed field where contact is not just possible but routine.

"Bar-to-bar battles" is not metaphor. It describes the literal proximity of riders whose handlebars are close enough to catch each other's elbows in tight sections. On La Thuile's XCC loop, the natural terrain narrows the course enough to create those situations repeatedly. Winning from a lead group requires both the fitness to go to the front and the bike-handling to hold it through whatever the course puts in front of you in the next three seconds.

Blunk's Season Pattern

Savilia Blunk arrived at La Thuile already carrying XCC form from earlier in the 2026 series. The Decathlon Ford Racing Team rider has been one of the most consistent performers in the women's short-track category, and the La Thuile result extends a pattern that will matter when the season standings are settled.

XCC points feed directly into the World Series overall ranking — separate from but parallel to the XCO standings — and a rider who is consistently dangerous in short-track builds a classification position that can survive a bad day in the longer format.

Adrien Boichis is 23 years old, French, and the kind of rider who makes the XCC format look like something it was designed for: short efforts, high power, aggressive positioning in a tight field. His background includes the U23 Mountain Bike XCC world title, and the La Thuile win adds to a 2026 season in which the French contingent has been notably strong across the short-track category.

The La Thuile terrain suits his style. The course's combination of punchy climbs and technical singletrack on natural ground rewards power-to-weight over raw sprinting capacity. There is no flat finish to the XCC circuit; the terrain keeps sorting the field until the tape.

The Course: Where the Race Is Won

La Thuile's XCC circuit uses natural singletrack sections that have become signature features over successive World Cup visits. The course includes named landmarks — among them "The Meteorite," a section of exposed root-and-rock terrain that demands precise line selection under race pressure — as well as the technical descents on alpine hardpack that define this venue's character. The grip is different from loam: faster, more unforgiving of half-committed lines.

The course's altitude is a genuine performance variable. At 1,441 metres, La Thuile sits high enough that riders coming from lower training elevations notice the difference in their first laps. The physical demands of the XCC are compressed into a short window; there is no time to acclimatise mid-race.

The surrounding backdrop — the Rutor massif, the peaks of the Val d'Aosta corridor, the glacier visible above the tree line — makes this one of the more visually striking venues on the circuit. Drone footage of La Thuile's XCC tends to travel further than the race itself.

Looking to Sunday

The XCO follows on Sunday July 5, with the Elite women starting at 13:30 CEST and the Elite men at 15:30. The XCO uses the same course infrastructure but adds laps — more technically demanding as fatigue accumulates, and worth the full World Cup points that the XCC supplements. The weekend's full story won't be told until Sunday evening.

Alongside the XC programme, La Thuile's Downhill and Enduro fields are also on the mountain this weekend — the only venue on the 2026 calendar where all four disciplines share the same event hub, lifts, and paddock.

For a guide to riding La Thuile and the wider Aosta Valley as a destination — whether you're here for the World Cup or planning a training trip independently — see our Valle d'Aosta MTB destination guide.