Legendary mountain biker Nino Schurter (Scott-SRAM) will end his career in front of his home crowd with two races – the XCO World Championships in Crans-Montana and his favorite race, the World Championship stage in Lenzerheide.
The Swiss cyclist's achievements include Olympic gold at the 2016 Rio Games, silver at the 2012 London Games, and bronze at the 2008 Beijing Games. He has been world champion ten times (2009, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022) and has won the World Cup overall nine times (2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023).
Schurter earned his last XCO stage win – a record 36th – in June 2024 in Val di Sole, Trentino, in the WHOOP UCI mountain bike series.
This season started strongly with his third Cape Epic win (his first since 2019) with Filippo Colombo, but he has also finished in the top ten twice in the XCO World Cup this year – in Araxá in April and in Pal Arinsal in July.
"A good mountain bike family and all. For the last two decades I have given my body, mind and soul to mountain biking. It's a beautiful sport, but at the professional level it's also ruthlessly tough. You either win races, you're a contender or you don't exist. There's no room for co-riders here. It's all or nothing, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Schurter.
"When I competed in my first World Championships, I was just a kid chasing a dream – in Lugano in 2003 – and I left with my first international medal. Little did I know then that this dream would carry me through countless unforgettable moments and allow me to win more than half of all those titles," he added.
What better way to end his career than to do it in front of his home crowd at his final two XCO races – starting with the Crans-Montana World Championships on September 14th and ending two weeks later with the Lenzerheide World Championship stage, which he last won in 2023.
