Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
FOr for the first time in her twelve-year mountain bike career, Evie Richards is the overall World Cup champion. Two-time world champion and 10-time individual World Cup winner, 2025 was a year of even more milestones for the Briton – although she admits the year was as “turbulent” as it was ultimately successful.
The 28-year-old enjoyed an excellent start to her season, Winning two races in a row in Araxa, BrazilAlthough there were no further wins, she was one of the most consistent performers throughout the year, scoring nine podium finishes. And after wearing the short track leader’s red jersey in Brazil, he held it until the end of the season to win his first overall World Cup title.
“Even in January I was like, ‘Oh my God, everything is going so well, it’s going to be a great year,'” she says. Independent“Brazil, I knew I wasn’t close to them fitness-wise, so that got me really excited because the next World Cup after that was Nove Mesto and to win that was a really big goal. I think I probably worked too hard for that goal and went a little bit beyond what I should have done.”
For the next two months, Richards struggled with recurring illness; She finished second in the Nove Mesto short track race but was forced to miss the June round in Val di Sol. “It was a really smooth start, and then got a little more turbulent, but I felt like I brought it back at the end of the year. I knew it would be a challenge to win overall when you’ve missed a round and no one else has, so I’m really glad I still managed to hold on to that jersey.”
That overall title has given a different flavor to his season but that was never the main goal. “I’m a racer,” she explains. “For me the feeling of winning a World Cup is always my main goal. But I think as the season went on, and I was coming in that red jersey every weekend, I thought, now that I’ve got this, I really don’t want to lose it. I didn’t want to put too much pressure on myself because I still wanted to go all out to try to win a World Cup.”
A second place in the final short-track race of the season in Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada, meant she captured the overall title and could enjoy victory in the last cross-country race (a longer, more endurance-based discipline) two days later. She recalls, “I always get nervous before short track, but then it was like, OK, you’ve done it, now go and enjoy another race.” “I can’t say [it was] Pure joy because we endured a lot, but this is a course I love to race on and it felt like the pressure was off.”
Finishing fourth in the overall cross-country standings was an unexpected bonus. “I’ve never been very consistent with cross country,” she says. “I don’t feel like it comes as naturally to me as short track, so honestly, it felt like a wonderful spinoff.
“It’s funny because all the training I’ve been doing is really for XCO, but I think I’m made for short track. Imagine if I just trained to be good at short track, what I could do?” She laughs.
“I’m 28 years old and I’m still learning how to race my best. I definitely feel like I’ve learned a lot this year and I know what I’m going to do next year to really step up and hopefully be on the podium in both of those overalls.”
The Trek Factory Racing rider laughs as she remembers her original introduction to short track; What has now become her favorite discipline used to be one she hated. “I moved up to elite during lockdown and so my first short track race would have been my first elite race, and I remember my coaches in lockdown, they were like, you’re going to be terrible at this, you hate racing in a group, you love being in a group.”
Richards worked with her psychologist Rich Hampson to learn to feel comfortable riding in a group and said that during the pandemic she would practice mini-race scenarios, in which her coach and her father would race her on an e-bike. A little unconventional training paid off: He won his first two elite short track races, and has continued in that vein ever since.
red bull athlete She credits her cyclo-cross background (she is a former under-23 world champion) for how natural she has always found the switch to the shorter format; Short-track races are usually over in 20–25 minutes. A return to cyclocross at some point is “on my radar,” she says, especially amid rumors that it will become a Winter Olympic sport. “I need to start doing some secret training,” she jokes. “I don’t want to just show up to all the races and be mid-pack. I really want to win.”
All types of cycling disciplines appeal to him: he suggests that his muscle build and explosive power would also make him suitable for track sprinting. Is there going to be another turn in career? “I think I need to learn to ride a track bike [first]But if the opportunity to do so comes, I will never say no,” she thinks.
In the short term his goals are more straightforward, including winning both the European and world Championships – “Winning both in the same year is the absolute ultimate goal” – and winning a cross-country World Cup, something she hasn’t done since Lenzerheide in 2021.
“I felt like I was so unlucky with mechanicals this year, I felt like it was taken away from me, so I really have the motivation to try to win a World Cup next year. Like, increase my performance, be more consistent, make sure I don’t get sick, and make sure I stay healthy all year.” She admits that “maybe not pushing as hard would help me, like less self-sabotaging.”
Richards’ achievements are made even more impressive by the fact that she came to cycling relatively late. “I think I’ve always loved the excitement of sports,” she says. “When I was little, my grandmother would take me to Center Parcs and, bless her, she would have to do the high ropes challenge and bungee jumping and scuba diving because I was too young to participate in any of that stuff. [alone]I think as I’ve grown older, I’ve become wiser!”
After playing hockey as a teenager she wanted to pick up another sport, and just about a year after first picking up a bike she was selected for her first mountain bike world championships in Norway in 2014. “I just told my friends, oh yeah, I’m going to Norway for the Worlds race next week, and they were like, no way, what?!”
That trip to Lillehammer, she recalls, brought about a transformation. “I couldn’t do technical stuff, I had to go on all the chicken runs [an easier line around the course]And I think that’s when something clicked in me. I was like, hockey is good, but this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
More than ten years later, it seems safe to say that the decision has yielded far greater benefits.