Luca Schwarzbauer Extends Contract With Canyon for 3 Years

 XC is extremely popular globally and covered well so I would assume it holds the highest value to bike companies regardless of what the enduro bros think. TV spectators get to see tons of the track covered and the entire race vs just snips of certain parts and only certain riders.

 @warmerdamj: XC is pretty rad to watch even though I would consider myself an 'enduro bro'. Once you can begin to recognize all the battles and mind games happening its actually very entertaining.

 @warmerdamj: I'm a DH guy but would rather watch the XC racing to see the battles.

 @warmerdamj: it also helps that outside of this tiny pinkbike bubble, xc bikes globally sell in far higher numbers than any other mtb varieties, it's not even close.

 @warmerdamj: Outside of the World Cups, XC isn't well covered at all. All MTB racing is the poor relation of road cycling....

And it has to be said, the MTB media, and even MTB teams are poor at promotion......most go into hibernation in the off season.........You don't find the road teams doing similar.

 @Starch-Anton: The amount of money is in road cycling (team budgets, salaries) is nowhere near compared to MTB disciplines.
Also, there's a rich history of legendary races of grand tours, monumentals, crits, etc. which MTB doesn't really have yet.

 @Tmackstab: The thing I don't understand at all is, how the heck are those mass starts fair to anyone at the back? How in the actual fk are they supposed to catch up?

 @mkul7r4: From UCI website "All riders (from the same category) start together. The start line is always eight metres wide and so there are usually eight riders per line. Cross-Country Short track (XCC), was a race format introduced in 2018 to shake up how the starting order for the main XCO World Cup race was determined. Basically, riders have to race XCC to have a chance at a good start spot in XCO.
If a rider finishes in the top-24 of the XCC race, their finishing position means that they occupy the front three starting rows of the XCO race, the first eight finishers being on the front row and so on. Spots after the top-24 are determined by UCI XCO individual rankings and for the unclassified riders by drawing lots."

So say the XCO course has some wide open sections where a strong rider could pass, that rider may want to save gas in the XCC and sacrifice a good start position for the XCO knowing they'll be able to pull back spots. Its all strategy. So to ab=nswer your question, the start positions are earned through points and the XCC finish position, it's not random.

 @mkul7r4: they arent.

 @mkul7r4: Be Tom Pidcock?

 @bananowy: Exactly why none of be big end of seasons sales were for shorter travel bikes.

 money

 money

 @Ebinator: its well known Luca recieves a bratwurst stupendous when he wins. Otherwise, only hot dogs.

 *stipend. But apt autocorrect

 geld

 geld

 Top-earning Rockettes make USD 61k

 That was only 30 minutes ago.. come back on Friday for pinkbike's breaking news article.