Hello,

It was wet and wild in Bielsko-Biała, Poland, last weekend for the opening round of the 2025 downhill World Cup series.

Downhill is a fast-moving sport of constant change and progression; the first World Cup of the year is always an exciting time to see who’s up to speed and what’s new for the season ahead.

Lashing rain turned to snow during finals but the racing never slowed down. From the first juniors to the last elites, Bielsko-Biała’s race was a show of full commitment riding and pure skill. It was a preview of the brilliant season ahead.

We’ve compiled our notes and photos by Boris, Seb and Sven below.

Hope you enjoy flicking through.

Cheers,

James
+the Misspent Summers team

PRODUCT: EVERYDAY LOGO T-SHIRT

METTLE: dire conditions and pure action at the Bielsko-Biała, Poland, DH World Cup 2025

• Review: read our pre-race newsletter here and a concise report in George Gore Browne’s B-Zone Bullets here
• Rewind: remind yourself what happened last time in Bielsko-Biała in our 2024 notes here (includes the best OTB image)
• Nonqualified: back to school for pro downhillers as the first 2025 DH World Cup began with an all-new qualifying system that saw two qualifying sessions on the same day. The top-20 men and top-10 women in the first session qualified for Sunday’s finals, but many big-name riders didn’t make the cut (Pierron, Brosnan, Iles, Goldstone, etc). For a moment, minor panic took over – imagine the first finals with the new format and some of the sport’s biggest stars not even racing – but the second qualifying session, from which the top-10 men and top-5 women go into finals, saw a lot of them turn around their fortunes to make it through
• Quantified: there were 103 elite men and 32 elite women on the start lists for Q1, with 20 men and 10 women going straight into finals. Men had to be in the top 19.4% to make it straight through; women needed to be in the top 31.25%. About one fifth of the men’s field had previously achieved an elite DH World Cup podium; more than half of the women’s field had previously achieved an elite DH World Cup podium
• Finals micro report: juniors set things in motion with blinding runs from Rosa Marie Jensen to win her first-ever World Cup, and Max Alran starting his second junior year just as he finished 2024 with another win. Elite women had some of the most surprising conditions ever as snow came down and blanketed the top of the course. No matter – they battled on and Tahnée Seagrave took the win in her first World Cup for new sponsor Orbea, with Anna Newkirk (also on a new setup with Frameworks Racing) in second and Nina Hoffmann third. Loic Bruni stamped his authority on the Polish hillside with a win in qualifying backed up by another win in finals (he also began 2024 with a first-round win and went on to win the series). Oisin O’Callaghan put in a skilful ride, demonstrating his technical prowess to finish just 0.156s behind Bruni in second, with Amaury Pierron in third a few tenths of further back
• Full results here
• Free stuff: we were happy to see the full Qualifying 2 session free to watch on YouTube. One hour of hero mud riding and controversy here
• Winner: watch the Sleeper Co Bielsko-Biała Shreddit here and buy a new tee to support their work here
• Soundbite: ‘First kit of the season’ (various)

Continued below…

• Polegate: the hot topic after the weekend – brilliant material for website and video clicks – was whether Amaury Pierron going around a course marker pole in plain sight and on TV should have led to his disqualification from the second qualifying session. There are many opinions on the matter, but the only available truth is that he wasn’t disqualified. Case closed or should the rules be revised, clarified and communicated so there’s no uncertainty for competitors and fans?
• Gatesgate: also, Hattie Harnden had to slow down in her finals race run as someone ran down the course in front of her, blocking her path. Despite the clear obstruction, she didn’t get a re-run (this is a fact – opinions available wherever you get your social media). Harnden is competing for the €100,000 Gates belted purse prize fund; who knows what might have happened if she’d had a re-run
• Threw the glove: Asa Vermette crashed out less than a minute into his race run and landed in the slop. His right hand was covered in mud, so he tore off his glove and left it in the undergrowth for a lucky fan to fetch. Gloves are only recommended – not mandatory – in the UCI MTB rule book, but certain countries have their own extra rules. At the next round in Loudenvielle, France, full-finger gloves are mandatory, so riders will have to wait until they finish their runs to throw the glove
• Steezy does it: not only did Tahnée Seagrave win the race, she also won the internet. After riding with a big sock over her unreleased new Orbea DH bike all winter and in practice, the sock was back on as her bike was wheeled onto the podium. But Seagrave tore the sock off, revealing the previously unseen bike to the world in possibly the best bike launch ever. Give her a marketing job!
• Gary’s stats: the MTB World Series IG noted, without context or explanation, that ‘After a full-throttle run at the UCI DHI World Cup in Bielsko-Biała, [Loic Bruni is] bouncing back with a solid 77% recovery’. It also said – this time ‘powered by’ its Ai partner Amazon Web Services – that Tahnée Seagrave’s and Bruni’s average speeds were 43.01km/h and 47.337km/h – which were, in fact, their speed trap speeds, not averages. Does the algorithm need tweaking?
• Tricky reverse: the elite qualifying start lists were amended after their initial publication. First, they had the top-20 ranked men and top-10 women in reverse order followed by everyone else in reverse UCI ranking order. That meant that the 21^st-ranked elite man would have been a long time after the first-ranked one – in potentially completely different conditions (the UK’s Matt Walker would have ridden 41 minutes after Loic Bruni). Luckily the reversal was reversed, and a new set of qualifying start lists published, this time with only the top-20/10 in reverse order then everyone else in ascending order. This bullet point powered by AWS (awkward word structures)
• Spell check: Hoffmann
• Name changers: Max, the streaming platform many of us watch DH and XC World Cups on, is becoming HBO Max this summer

More below…

• Long time since MSA: 225 days passed between the 2024 DH World Cup finals race day (5 Oct) in Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada, and this first 2025 race day in Bielsko-Biała (18 May). That’s a long time away from racing! For Jackson Goldstone, it had been even longer. He missed the entire 2024 season through injury, so the last time he had lined up for a World Cup was Mont-Sainte-Anne 2023, some 589 days before Bielsko-Biała. Goldstone was sick all week but still finished 20^th
• Boxed in: coach Chris Kilmurray notes there were five gearbox bikes in finals out of 75 total riders (elites and juniors combined)
• Pure destruction: Kilmurray also notes that ‘even with 30 mins less practice than in 2024 (six hours total practice time now, compared to 6hrs 30 before), the track died. There were 90 fewer riders than 2024 too, but the weather was just brutal. For the first time in a long time, timed training winning times in all categories were the fastest times of the weekend. Yep, the track died that much’
• Belt frenzy: with several teams – Atherton, Intense Factory, MS Racing, AON – on belt drive bikes, driven by the quest for the prize money – sorry, for performance, it feels like 2025 really could be the year we see a first-ever DH World Cup win on a belt drive. But let’s not forget 2004 when Greg Minnaar rocked up to the season-opening World Cup race in Fort William, Scotland, on a brand-new team and bike – G-Cross Honda – equipped with a highly secretive gearbox (with a chain, not a belt). He won the race, and the rest is history* (*Or is it? Was there ever a gearbox inside the box, or only ever a derailleur in a can?)
• Trash free tear-offs: we pondered buying some Bluetooth roll-offs from eBay last year to reduce littering. But now you can go back to the future and fit a Risk Racing ‘The Ripper’ Bluetooth roll-off system to any goggles, as Thibaut Dapréla did in Bielsko-Biała
• Get well soon: Pivot Factory Racing teammates Bernard Kerr and Ryan Griffith both suffered horrendous injuries in a freak accident while riding in Poland a few days before the World Cup. Luckily, team manager Kerr was able to draft in pinner Roger Vieira as a fill-in rider for the rest of the season
• Representing: thank you to Misspent Summers-supported rider Billy Pugh for representing us and finishing an excellent 18^th in junior men
• Thanks: a huge thank you to everyone making our racing coverage possible. To Boris, Seb and Sven for their outstanding photography, all the contributors and writers, the brands supporting our work and you for reading
• Get involved: if you like our stuff and want to contribute, every order on our store helps us continue recording the history of mountain biking. Massive thanks to everyone supporting Misspent Summers

Further reading:
A note from Brazil XC World Cup R1 2025
Bermed Out

Notes newsletters are compiled with the help of many contributors. Thank you to everyone who chips in – we love doing this stuff and you make it possible.