2026 Mountain Bike End of Season Report

2026 Mountain Bike End of Season Report 

Season-At-A-Glance 

The 2026 mountain bike season delivered four Ontario Cup rounds across four venues, a three-day Provincial Championships at Woodnewton, and a Canadian XCM Championship weekend hosted in Sault Ste. Marie. It closed with Ontario riders holding national titles and the provincial series decided across twenty-six categories. 

• Four MTB Ontario Cup rounds: Highlands Nordic, Boler Mountain, Hardwood Ski and Bike, and Hiawatha Highlands. 

• 2026 MTB Provincial Championships held September 11 to 13 at Woodnewton in Uxbridge, across three formats: XCC Short Track, Team Relay and XCO. 

• The Canadian XCM Championships came to Ontario on September 5, hosted at Hiawatha Highlands the day before the final Ontario Cup round. 

• Every Ontario Cup round ran a two-discipline weekend, pairing Short Track (XCC) on Saturday with Cross Country Olympic (XCO) on Sunday. 

• The OCup points system awarded points to the top 20 finishers with a one-point gap between positions, a dropped scores system, and a 10-point Provincial Championships bonus. 

• A deep regional calendar of weekly series and endurance events ran from early May through to the end of September. 

Thank you to every athlete, volunteer, commissaire, host club and sponsor who made the 2026 mountain bike season possible. 

MTB Ontario Cup Series 

MTB OCup #1: Highlands Nordic 

May 16 and 17, 2026, Duntroon. Hosted by Collingwood Collective Racing, presented by Escarpment Magazine. 

The season opened in the Highlands Cluster of trails on a brand-new course built to suit riders of all ages and abilities, with a demanding, feature-rich expert course laid out for elite competitors preparing for future Canada Cup racing. From the moment riders arrived the venue had a festival feel: music, concessions and strong prizing, the Highlands Lodge and food on site, and camping on both Friday and Saturday nights for the many who made a weekend of it. 

Race highlights 

Elite and Junior XCO athletes raced for a cash purse, the top five in each XCC category took home prizes, and medals went to the top three in every XCO category. Podium protocol was strictly enforced, giving every winner a proper celebration. 

Thank you to Escarpment Magazine as presenting sponsor, to Collingwood Collective Racing as host, and to Peak to Shore Physiotherapy, Information Packaging, Duntroon Highlands, Collingwood Cycling Club, Bad Strip Co., Blindstone, and Shred Girls Publishing for supporting the next generation of riders and storytellers. Thank you to the volunteers and families who made the weekend possible. 

MTB OCup #2: Boler Mountain 

June 13 and 14, 2026, London. Surrounded by more than 120 acres of Carolinian forest. 

Boler Mountain hosted one of the most spectator-friendly weekends on the calendar. Saturday’s Short Track kept riders close together on a compact course where positioning, acceleration and bike handling mattered at every corner. Sunday’s Cross Country asked a different question, combining steady climbs, flowing descents, technical singletrack, double-track passing opportunities and Boler’s newly built flow trail. 

Short Track, Saturday 

Clare Caners claimed U13 Girls and Kaleb Yoon took U13 Boys. Cole Butcher earned the U15 Boys title, Nicole Haviland topped the U17 Girls field and Tomas Liska-Gardiner captured U17 Boys. Sylvia Chabot won U19 Women and Ryan Elgie finished first in U19 Men. In the Masters divisions, Sue Haviland, Maureen O’Hare, Jan Roubal and Jon Barnes each earned victories. 

Cross Country, Sunday 

Vienna Biskaborn and Kaleb Yoon claimed the U13 categories, while Beatrice Wheeler and Julian Porter topped U11. Brodie Wilson took U15 Girls, and Cole Butcher completed an impressive weekend by adding the U15 Boys XCO victory to his Short Track result. 

Nicole Haviland continued her weekend with the U17 Expert Women win, while Tomas Liska-Gardiner captured U17 Expert Men ahead of Hayden Rowaan and Henry Weigel. Emily Jaenicke secured U19 Expert Women and Alex McDonald finished first in U19 Expert Men. In the sport categories, Megan Hopkins, Nicholas Grinvalds, Breeze Biskaborn and Colton Sharland each earned wins. 

Calvin Loney claimed the Elite Men’s victory after four fast laps, finishing just one second ahead of Dan Souter in one of the closest races of the weekend. Ben Dutton took Senior Men 19-34, while Nick Thompson and Suzie Burton won the Novice categories. Gabriella Samuel, Sue Haviland, Maureen O’Hare and Anna Tykoliz claimed Women’s Masters victories, with Steven Le-Magueresse, Jan Roubal and Craig Linton first in the Men’s. 

Saturday’s free kids’ race on Boler’s Green Trail gave young riders the chance to experience race day in a fun and welcoming environment. The Treetop Adventure Park, beach volleyball courts and rooftop patio kept families entertained between races. 

Thank you to Boler Mountain, Ontario Cycling, the commissaires, timing crew, medical personnel, volunteers, staff, sponsors and families who made MTB OCup #2 a success. 

MTB OCup #3: Hardwood Ski and Bike 

June 20 and 21, 2026, Oro-Medonte. Delivered with Pulse Racing. 

Hardwood has a long history of hosting provincial and national level events, and it again provided the backdrop for a full weekend of Short Track and Cross-Country racing. Saturday opened with fast, aggressive Short Track where strong starts and the ability to carry speed through each lap decided several categories. Sunday moved to Hardwood’s well known trail network, testing riders with technical sections, flowing trails and race efforts that rewarded smart pacing and strong bike handling. 

Race highlights 

Volunteers played an important role behind the scenes, supporting everything from registration and course operations to timing, rider services and event logistics. Thank you to Hardwood Ski and Bike, Pulse Racing, Ontario Cycling, the commissaires, timing crew, medical personnel, volunteers, sponsors, families, riders and spectators. 

MTB OCup #4: Hiawatha Highlands 

September 6, 2026, Sault Ste. Marie. Hosted by the Sault Cycling Club. 

The series finale came at the end of one of the biggest weekends of the season. Sault Ste. Marie offers more than 60 km of world-class trail just minutes from downtown, and the Sault Cycling Club, working with Ontario Cycling and Tourism Sault Ste. Marie, delivered both quality technical terrain and an exceptional atmosphere. The weather held for both days, and the local community turned out with volunteers, sponsors and vendors supporting the event throughout. 

Sunday showed incredible resiliency from our riders, with several riders who had emptied themselves on Saturday’s national marathon course came back twenty-four hours later to add provincial series hardware to their national results. Sofie Gillis, fresh off her U17 Women’s national title, won U17 Expert Girls. Meredith Davies backed up her Masters Women 35-44 national championship with a Master A Women’s win. Jan Roubal, third in Saturday’s Masters Men 45-54 national race, turned it around to win Master B Men. Hunter Mott bounced back to win the Elite Men’s race. Ryan Elgie and Alex McDonald went one-two in U19 Expert Men after withdrawing from Saturday’s Junior Men’s championship. 

Hardwood Racing Club had a standout day in U19 Expert Women, sweeping the top four spots led by winner Emily Samuelson, with the whole podium separated by less than a minute. David Arnold strung together a strong weekend of his own, following a runner-up finish in Saturday’s 55+ Challenge with the win in Master C Men. 

OCup #4 winners 

Thank you to the Sault Cycling Club and everyone who volunteered, sponsored and supported the event at Hiawatha Highlands across both days of racing, and to the officials, athletes and spectators for a memorable weekend. 

Final 2026 MTB OCup Series Standings 

Series champions are determined by total points across all OCup events, factoring in dropped scores and the Provincial Championships bonus. Champions receive their own Series Winner jersey from Montu Bikes. 

Congratulations to every rider who finished the series, and to everyone who lined up for a first Ontario Cup race in 2026. 

2026 MTB Provincial Championships 

September 11 to 13, 2026, Woodnewton, Uxbridge. Hosted by the Durham Shredders Mountain Bike Club. 

Three days, three formats and a single trail network. The championships asked riders to be complete mountain bikers: explosive on Friday, collaborative on Saturday, and durable on Sunday. The weather held all three days, and the Durham Shredders’ local community turned out in force with volunteers, sponsors and vendors supporting the event from start to finish. It made for a championship weekend that felt as much like a community celebration as a race meet. 

Friday: XCC Short Track 

The weekend opened with a format built for speed and spectacle. Races ran roughly fifteen minutes for the younger categories and longer for the adult fields, with riders completing repeated laps of a compact circuit that kept the action in view of spectators throughout. There was little room to recover between efforts, and the format rewarded riders who could hold their intensity lap after lap. 

It produced the tightest finish of the entire weekend. In the U23 and Elite Men’s race, Hunter Mott out-sprinted Alex McCabe by eight-hundredths of a second, 20:42.51 to 20:42.59, for the provincial title. U13 Boys was nearly as close, with Isaac Aston holding off Kaleb Yoon by less than a second. 

Saturday: Team Relay 

Saturday shifted the emphasis from individual effort to teamwork. Nine four-rider teams each sent riders out one at a time, tagging off after a lap apiece, turning the usually solitary discipline of cross-country racing into a test of collective speed and consistency. 

The winning Shredders team took gold in decisive fashion, putting more than ninety seconds into the rest of the field. 

Sunday: XCO Cross-Country Olympic 

The championship weekend closed with the XCO race, the traditional Olympic-distance format and the truest test of the trio. Distances scaled by category, from 7 kilometres for the youngest riders up to a full 30 kilometres for the Elite Men, with multiple laps putting climbing legs, technical handling and endurance all on trial. 

Tyler Clark took the Elite Men’s title, while Sue Haviland of Shredders Race Team won the Elite Women’s race. The day again delivered nail-biting finishes further down the results sheet. Emily Purchase edged Clare Caners by one-tenth of a second in U13 Girls, and Ethan Lambourn held off Hayden Rowaan by three-tenths in U17 Expert Boys. 

Weekend standouts 

Nine riders won their category in both the Friday Short Track and the Sunday XCO, completing weekend sweeps: 

• Julian Porter, U11 Boys 

• Emily Purchase, U13 Girls 

• Cole Butcher, U15 Boys 

• Kinsley Biskaborn, U15 Girls 

• Nicole Haviland, U17 Expert Girls 

• Clare Hauber, U19 Expert Women 

• Kelsey Krushel, Master Men 35-44 

• Jon Barnes, Master Men 45-54 

• Jena Taylor-Hunter, Master Women 

With home-trail advantage and a deep roster of category winners across all three days, the Durham Shredders Race Team was the story of the weekend on the results sheet. The club’s volunteers, sponsors and vendors were just as visible off it, helping deliver three smooth, well-supported days of racing. 

Thank you to the Durham Shredders Mountain Bike Club and everyone who volunteered, sponsored, vended and cheered throughout the weekend. Thank you to the commissaires, athletes and spectators for a fantastic championship weekend, and to Zone4 Race Timing for keeping the results accurate and up to date. 

Canadian XCM Championships in Ontario 

September 5, 2026, Hiawatha Highlands, Sault Ste. Marie. Hosted by the Sault Cycling Club. 

Ontario hosted a national championship this season, and it landed the day before the final Ontario Cup round at the same venue. Saturday was a doubleheader. The day opened at 8am with the 30 km Challenge race, a single-lap open event for riders looking for a long day out without racing for a national title. At 11am the Canadian Championship categories rolled off the start line, with most fields racing 60 km over two laps and the Elite categories pushing to 90 km over three. 

The Elite races were the headline act, and both were won in commanding fashion. Haley Smith took the Elite Women’s national title in 5:11:56.9, finishing nearly nineteen minutes clear of runner-up Laurie Arseneault. Andrew L’Esperance won the Elite Men’s title in 4:27:12.1, building a lead of more than ten minutes over Emile Hamm. 

Peter Glassford added a national title to his season, winning Masters Men 35-44 in 3:12:58.0. The tightest race of the day came in Masters Men 55+, where Gregory Stevenson held off Lorenzo Caterini by just thirty seconds, and Rodney Puumala by barely a minute, after nearly four hours of racing. Sofie Gillis, Sylvia Chabot, Meredith Davies and Marie-Josée Le Jour each earned national titles through determined rides, a reflection of the commitment required simply to reach the start line of a four-hour championship marathon. In the morning’s Challenge race, brothers Kam and Slate Paradis went one-three in the U15 Men’s field. 

Canadian XCM National Champions 

XCM Challenge, 30 km 

Youth and Development Racing 

Mountain biking has the deepest youth pathway of any discipline on the Ontario Cycling calendar. Every Ontario Cup weekend in 2026 ran categories from U11 upward, in both Short Track and Cross Country, and Provincials did the same across all three formats. 

What the youth season produced 

• U11 through U19 categories raced at every one of the four Ontario Cup rounds, in both disciplines, and at all three days of Provincials. 

• Julian Porter won U11 Boys at Provincials in both Short Track and XCO and took the series title with 90 points. 

• Emily Purchase won the U13 Girls series, then swept both Provincials formats, edging Clare Caners by one-tenth of a second in the XCO. 

• Cole Butcher of Peterborough Cycling Club won the U15 Boys series and both Provincials titles. 

• Sofie Gillis won the U17 Expert Girls series and a Canadian XCM national title in the same month. 

• Henry Weigel took a national XCM title in U17 Men and the U17 Boys Short Track provincial title. 

• Callum Irwin and Sylvia Chabot won Junior national XCM titles. 

• Boler Mountain ran a free kids’ race on the Green Trail, giving young riders a first taste of race day in a low-pressure setting. 

• The Coulson’s Hill weekly series ran a Mini-Me category, and the King Race series offered a Little Rippers course, both keeping entry-level youth racing available every week through the summer. 

Clubs developing riders 

Shredders Race Team, Hardwood Racing Club, Attack Racing, Peterborough Cycling Club, KW Cycling Academy, Collingwood Collective Racing, Golden Horseshoe Cycling Hub, Durham Shredders DEVO, Caledon Hills Armada and Stimulus Trek all put riders on podiums across the season. The Ontario Cycling Youth Cycling Fund in memory of Tony Osborne remained available to youth events for operational costs such as medals, timing, police and barricades. 

Regional MTB Events and Weekly Series 

Beyond the Ontario Cup and Provincial Championships, the mountain bike calendar was carried by clubs and small organizing committees running weekly series and endurance events in their own communities. 

Weekly series 

One-day and endurance events 

Host Clubs and Community 

Four host clubs carried the 2026 mountain bike season, and each brought something distinct to it. 

Thank You!

None of this happens without people. Not one race, not one podium, not one finish line. 

To our volunteers 

Course marshals, registration teams, timing crews, feed zone and tech zone staff, course builders and the people who walked the tape at dawn and pulled it down at dusk. Volunteers supported every Ontario Cup weekend, all three days of Provincials and both days in the Soo. At Hardwood they covered registration, course operations, timing, rider services and logistics. At Woodnewton and Hiawatha Highlands they turned out in force alongside sponsors and vendors. Thank you. 

To our host clubs and organizers 

• Collingwood Collective Racing and Escarpment Magazine, for MTB OCup #1 at Highlands Nordic. 

• Boler Mountain, for MTB OCup #2 in London. 

• Hardwood Ski and Bike and Pulse Racing, for MTB OCup #3, the Singletrack Classic, the Women’s 4 Hour Relay, the Epic 8 Hour relays and the Wednesday Night series. 

• The Sault Cycling Club and Tourism Sault Ste. Marie, for the Canadian XCM Championships and MTB OCup #4 at Hiawatha Highlands. 

• The Durham Shredders Mountain Bike Club, for the 2026 MTB Provincial Championships at Woodnewton. 

• The organizers behind the Coulson’s Hill weekly series and Evolution Cycles’ King Race MTB Series, who kept weekly racing available all summer. 

To our commissaires and officials 

Commissaires, officials, timing crews and medical personnel worked in every Ontario Cup weekend and all three days of Provincials, across two disciplines each time. Short Track and Cross Country on consecutive days effectively doubles the officiating load of a single-format weekend, and it was carried without fuss all season. Thank you also to Zone4 Race Timing for keeping results accurate and up to date throughout the championship weekend. 

To our host communities and partners 

Thank you to Duntroon and the Collingwood area, London, Oro-Medonte, Uxbridge and Sault Ste. Marie for hosting us. Thank you to Tourism Sault Ste. Marie, to Montu Bikes for supplying the Ontario Cup Series Overall Winner jerseys, to Champion System by Tribe Solutions as Official OC Apparel Supplier, to Ben Bravo Photography, and to Peak to Shore Physiotherapy, Information Packaging, Duntroon Highlands, Collingwood Cycling Club, Bad Strip Co., Blindstone and Shred Girls Publishing for backing events in their own communities. 

To our athletes and their families 

To everyone who pinned a number in 2026: the riders who won provincial jerseys and national titles, the U11 riders lining up for a first Ontario Cup, the riders who raced a four-hour national marathon on Saturday and came back for an Ontario Cup on Sunday, the Masters riders still racing hard into their sixties and seventies, and the parents who drove to Duntroon, London, Oro-Medonte, Uxbridge and the Soo to make it all possible. You are the reason the rest of it matters. Thank you for racing hard, racing clean and racing with respect for the people running the show.