Adrien Boichis waited until the last climb. When he rose from the saddle, the race was already over. On 19 June 2026, at Round 4 of the UCI Cross-Country Short Track World Cup in Lenzerheide, the Frenchman crossed the line six seconds clear to take his first XCC short-track World Cup win, ahead of compatriot Luca Martin and the American Bjorn Riley.
How it was decided
The short track is a brief, brutal format, and this one ran hot from the gun. By lap two, Fabio Püntener of Scott-SRAM found himself in the lead of a big front group that was strung out, and the Swiss rider continued to set the pace deep into the fourth lap, when Boichis took up proceedings. Luca Martin then seized the lead on lap six, setting a pace that stretched the field.
The selection came on the penultimate climb. When Martin put in a concerted effort, the lead pack was stretched and whittled down to seven. The following lap, Boichis threw down the gauntlet on the same climb, and only Martin was able to follow, with Riley a few bike lengths in arrears. This time the attack held. Boichis' move proved the winning one, Martin had no answer for his fellow Frenchman's power, and Riley came home third for his first UCI XCC World Cup podium.
The context sharpened the result. Christopher Blevins, the reigning XCC World Cup overall winner and Boichis' Specialized teammate, was returning after recovering from a broken collarbone sustained in a crash in South Korea. Boichis had kept the wins coming in Blevins' absence, and the question was whether the Frenchman would be given free rein with the more senior rider back. He answered it himself.
A trajectory taking shape
The win did not arrive from nowhere. The race came five days on from the grueling XCO World Cup at Saalfelden-Leogang in Austria, where Boichis had taken his first XCO World Cup victory. Back-to-back weekends reward the rider who recovers best, and Lenzerheide showed he had.
Boichis framed it as a slow return to form rather than a sudden arrival.
"Towards the end of last year I started feeling good in the short tracks again. In 2023, I was good and then took some time to get back to it. I think just race after race I feel better."
He spoke, too, of the weight of the team around him. "I love my team so much and I'm super happy to be there, but also it's a team with a lot of champions. So you need to be good to feel like you belong there, and slowly but surely I feel like I belong there," he told reporters after the race.
Two wins in five days, on two different terrains. The belonging is no longer in question.
