Cross-Country, Women1

Jenny Rissveds of Sweden was the defending Olympic champion in women’s cross-country mountain biking, but she had not seen many strong results since that victory. Much the same could be said for Poland’s Maja Włoszczowska and Canada’s Catharine Pendrel, the silver and bronze medallists respectively. France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, however, winner of the past two editions of the World Championships and also the 2021 European Champion, was much more favored. Jolanda Neff of Switzerland, meanwhile, had won the test event. The qualification for the event was completed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and thus was not impacted by the delay of the Tokyo Games.

Ferrand-Prévot slid out early in the race to give Neff a lead that she never relinquished. Great Britain’s Evie Richards, the 2018 Commonwealth Games runner-up, looked to be in contention early on, but she was soon replaced in the lead pack by Neff’s compatriots Sina Frei and Linda Indergand. The three Swiss riders soon pulled ahead of all other competitors and captured all three medals by a comfortable margin.

This was Switzerland’s first podium sweep since the 1936 Berlin Games, when they captured all of the medals in the floor exercise, although in that case bronze was shared by a German competitor. Switzerland’s only other clean sweep had come in 1924, in the pommeled horse, when the nation had taken the top four spots. As for cycling sweeps, this had only occurred previously at the 1904 St. Louis Olympics, in many of the odd, US-dominated races, and the 1906 Intercalated Games, when France captured the podium in the road race.