Only a few elite cross-country teams have more than one woman on the roster, so the space for mentorship is limited, but it has the potential to elevate the sport.
Michele Mondini, Cor Vos, Piper Albrecht
Mentorship in women’s cross-country mountain biking should be simple. Athletes well-versed with the structures and routines of World Cup racing share their knowledge with the next generation, all with a big-picture view of growing the sport beyond themselves.
For all the talk of progress in women’s sport, the reality inside team paddocks and start pens is more complicated. For starters, many factory teams still field just a single woman, and on teams with multiple women, vulnerability isn’t always rewarded, and collaboration isn’t necessarily wanted.
Cannondale Factory’s Jolanda Neff knows that better than most. More than a decade ago, before she would go on to win World Cups, World Championships and an Olympic gold medal, Neff was a young rider stepping into the elite ranks who was fortunate enough to find herself alongside a mentor who played a pivotal role in her early elite career and helped lay the foundation for her success. What she assumed was a normal inter-team dynamic turned out to be anything but.
In the years that followed, she discovered that even having another woman on the team does not necessarily mean having support. Now, alongside Ana Santos, an emerging talent on Cannondale who is finding her feet in the elite ranks, Neff finds herself on the other side of that equation.
Mentorship isn’t always wanted
When I ask about mentorship on teams that have historically had more than one woman, Neff doesn’t hesitate: “It’s not a given,” she said. Even in a World Cup paddock that can appear united and progressive, it can hide a far more tense dynamic. “Just because you have a teammate doesn’t mean that you are good teammates.”
The simple numbers of many World Cup rosters act as a barrier to mentorship. “It’s still very special that you have two women on the same team,” she said. Cannondale Factory Racing, she pointed out, only fielded a single female rider until Santos and Neff joined in 2025. “Even for Cannondale, we are the first two women on the team.”
On paper, that pairing of Neff and Santos looks like a relationship perfect for mentorship: Neff, a World and Olympic champion, and Santos, stepping into her first elite season, with the pair separated by a nine-year age gap. For Neff, there is symmetry in this relationship to the one she had with her own mentor when she was a young up-and-comer.
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