What happened to World enduro?

I think that sponsors tightening their belts is a large part of it.  Enduro programs have been scaled back across the industry.

I suspect at this point there just isn't enough financial support across the industry for the number of riders needed to make it worthwhile.

The spirit didn't endure.

Very hard to get a good coverage package compared to DH. It is also evolving into mini DH and DH with its coverage is 1,000% better and is a much more exciting format to watch. I hope it remains at the grassroots level, they are a blast with a pack of friends. 

Good joke I remember the spirit of enduro punchlines back in the day. I think obviously international racing is having an unfortunate moment, but I think for places with less elevation especially it will stick around as a gravity discipline on the local level.It's always been the most fun to race, hardest to capture kind of deal, much like WRC racing. 

Maybe if they way culled the field down they could have a broadcast that works but how do you do that without extensive qualifying? Maybe it's time to let it be a mostly local thing and then have a few big races tied to festivals possibly but no series.

the issues started with adding the e bike category and the very poorly done “televised” stage.  They no longer had the resources for the longer racing formats of old.  The racing took a back seat to a series no one was interested in and a product no one was watching.  And the riders, media, and fan’s noticed.

By the time they dropped the e-bike category and went back to focusing on putting on the best race possible, they had already taken on dh/xc for at least a couple seasons.  So now again their resources are divided.  In fact now it’s nearly an afterthought.  So many repeat venues.  Very little outside Europe (none some years).  Too many races where enduro plays third wheel to Dh/xc.  

Why should the industry invest in a series the series owners aren’t investing or interested in.  Especially if the series owners are asking them to pay more to take part in world cups.

They shouldn't have tried to make it in anyway live. Check out on YT the previous race coverage from 2018/2019 - you had Ric riding the stages before hand with Chris Ball (before he sold out) doing a preview, and then a what happened last time video and finally a results video - they were a much better format for coverage.

Edit - when I say live I mean televised. Live timing results - definitely good.

I went from an enduro die hard fan when EWS started back in the day, to barely checking results or coverage around 2024.

Some of it is personal, when EWS started out, I had met a lot of the French pros at local/regional/national races, it was easy to root for your local teenager: Nicolai, Cure, Dailly, Tordo and the legends Barel and Vouilloz. Little by little they started to retire or get hurt and not perform quite as well, these days I only recognise a handful of the names in the top 10.

Hate to bring up a sour subject, but EWS was launched with a 0 tolerance to dopping, which was very publicly challenged and we saw the organisers basically sweep it under the rug to protect their cash cows, which definitely tarnished the series in my eyes.

Finally, following live EWS wasn't that bad around 8 years ago: you had live results, the current yearly ranking and a live feed of twitter like posts on race day all on the same page. I expected them to start adding a more social feed, this could have been from offical accounts tied to the EWS or even a free for all from fans at the event, but it never materialised. Even worse, when the EWS became EDR the live feed updates disappeared and the UCI website is a mess to navigate. I try not to engage with instagram and don't particularly like the UCI/EDR created video packages. So other than MoimoiTV I don't see much of the racing at all.

At a local level, the shift from primarily "blind" racing to a more multiple DH runs that people have practiced 10x the previous week on ebikes killed my interest in signing up. The fact that I no longer race probably impact my interest in following the series.

EWS went from "World" series to "European bike park" series. There were only 6 rounds in 2025 and they were in France, Italy, Poland, Austria, Italy again, and France again. They wanted to do live coverage like DH instead of the 25 minute recap videos that came out on Monday. So instead of going to another continent and actually making it a WORLD series, they just went to places they could stream it easier. I remember when they were doing big 2 day races in Chile, and how sick the trails and racing looked in Blue Derby. UCI and WB came in like a PE and squeezed every dollar they could out of EWS and they are now about to scrap for parts. 

Regurgitated post from another thread but this EDR grieving thread seems appropriate...

EWS/EDR is mostly directly supported by the COMMUNITY of riders that are actively participating in Enduro racing, not random bored YouTube and HBO algorithm drifters. At least to me the most successful period of EWS was when there was a well promoted international web of qualifier events and 100/80 events along side the Elite races. People could actually aspire to racing an elite event and the pathway was clearly defined. Or there was the option to race an 80 to justify the trip out to watch elites Sunday. The COMMUNITY was buzzing at all the local qualifiers. I personally managed to scrape enough points to qualify and race for a few years and it was so rad to live the dream to some extent. 

I see the current downfall of Enduro directly related to both cramming EDR in as a sideshow to DH, XC and removing the grassroots community that the discipline was built on. Hopefully EDR doesn't fully implode, but if it does I hope that someone can recover it with the spirit and outlook of pre UCI pilled Chris Ball. Check out this interview with him from 2013 and imagine if it was the outlook for 2026: 

Enduro Mountain Bike Magazine: 2013 Chris Ball Interview

As someone who was there from the very beginning (okay EWS #2), I think the story arc of EWS/EDR is a bit more complex that people think, and that Chis Ball is not the boogie man some make him out to be.

EWS was not just Chis Ball, it was a run by a board, with Chis as the most public facing member of the organization.  Keep in mind that in 2013 enduro racing was seen as an exciting new sport (yes I know, it wasn't new in France and Italy) and the timing was perfect with new wheel sizes, new bikes, and new tech that grew along with it.  The bikes we have today owe a large debt to EWS.  At the same time DH had stagnated a bit, participant numbers were down, and fans and the media were pretty eager for something new.  Add in exotic locales, big mountain stages, and a huge amateur presence and you have the ingredients for rapid success but that was never going to be sustainable for going on 14 years.

Elite level enduro is not new any more, bike tech isn't progressing in leaps and bounds along side it, brands don't need it to showcase their new trail bikes or prove their capabilities, budgets are smaller, and DH interest has surged. Also, consider that after COVID teams didn't have the budgets to fund two different, expensive race teams to far corners of the globe.  The calendar got smaller and more compact, races got combinef together, and yes the ebike detour was not the success they hoped it would be. But it's not like one guy just decided to sell out and blow the whole thing up. Some of what felt like a rapid decline was done to save the racing industry from going under.

I'd argue the beginning of the end from the peak in 2019/20 was the separating of the elite series and the amateur series.  From an organizational standpoint it probably had to happen, but that was also a huge draw to the events and I imagine what helped take the series to places like Madeira, Tasmania, Patagonia, etc.  But without those amateur numbers it must be a lot harder to make any sort of financial return for some of those events. Downstream, the whole continental series and the qualifying events that supported entry into the EWS faded away too. Add in smaller race budgets, a real need to reduce travel and logistics as brands threaded the post-COVID needle, and here we are.  Add in the excitement around the new generation of DH racers like Jackson and Asa, the huge growth of Hardline and it's hard for EWS to feel exciting or relevant the way it once did.  In some ways, the recent growth and hype around Hardline reminds me of the 2013/14 years of EWS for mix of the same and different reasons. But now try to picture that being sustained for another decade?

Call me optomistic, but I've been around MTB racing long enough to see World Cup DH racing die at least twice, and all MTB racing suffer after the 90's boom and bust followed by the surge in road racing during Armstrong years.  These things tend to be cyclical, and the pendulum has definitely swung away from the best EWS years but maybe that's what needs to happen for a while.

Finally someone speaking some sense. And, no surprise it's someone with actual on the ground EWS experience! 

I’d agree the ews’s momentum had a natural stopping point.  It was only ever going to grow into a fairly niche but healthy sport.  But a lot of decisions were made promising to bring names like Richie Rude and Jesse, and Jack to the mainstream and instead we have a sport where pretty much the entire top of the sport has retired from enduro racing full time while being competitively capable.  

Maybe Chris doesn’t deserve all the blame.  But he was the face of the ews when it was acclaimed.  He can be the face of the edr as it treads water trying to survive.  Hope he has learned some lessons but so far it really doesn’t seem like it when it comes to the world cups or the rare interview/press release.

on a positive note.  I think there is a strong chance we can see a healthy international gravity trail bike racing series.  And the first bunch of years of the ews is a pretty fantastic place to look for a successful model.

at the time it appeared to me like the whole EWS to EDR was just a big pump and dump by CB, time seems to have reinforced that perspective to me.

If I was a pro EDR athlete that didn't want to or couldn't make the jump to DH at least part time, I'd be rollin as many of the mega mass start style events into my schedule as I could. The training is similar with pedaling power often a deciding factor in the outcome. 

The POV vids from the Megavalanche and its fellow mass start enduro style giant descent races are thrilling and the head to head nature of it is very exciting. Some of my favorite mtb vids this year were the head to head POV's from Killian Bron and others in these mega style events. 

Overall, the discipline just doesn't lend itself well to live coverage. As a result, I'd love to see the format go back towards multi day races in remote locations where prior practice is less likely with coverage similar to what it was in the EWS days- live timing and a wrap up highlights vid afterwords. Enduro bikes on enduro terrain are never going to match the excitement of DH in a live broadcast format, but that doesn't mean that the racing isn't really cool and relatable to the consumer.

Enduro used to be seen as the "just like us riding" discipline, athletes riding around on rad trails, socializing, then ripping the downhill. They had bikes like us. Now, to compete, even as an amateur, requires an enduro bike - which after years of marketing/media hype telling everyone they need one, most have discovered enduro bikes are great at very fast and steep trail, and are compromised everywhere else. The enduro courses are now designed to the edge of the enduro bike capability and the pro athlete's capability - near DH tracks.  The "riding just like us" connection is broken.

On the media side, the storytelling has been lost. It doesn't have to be live TV or videos, it needs passionate storytellers (like Vital's DH slideshows of the past) to discover which format will work best for the audience.

But hey, it's a cycle, XC is looking pretty rad now, when it was on life support just a few years back. Maybe Super D will make a comeback.

It was doomed to fold when they abandoned the sex appeal & glory of spandex in favor of skinny jeans.

If I had the time, I'd photoshop Dak's face onto one of these folks' bodies and put it in the team rumor thread.

I've never been turned on more by anything in my life

As if the original didn't look like a bad photoshop job already.

It seemed to really start dying when they changed the name from EWS to EDR.   Bad rebrand which made no sense.

THE BIKE CATEGORY and the INDUSTRY
People who love to ride downhill now tend to ride an Ebike instead of pedal up an equally heavy enduro bike.

So it´s not the race close to what most do as everyday riding. 

Finale Ligure f.ex. is now mainly home to midaged Germans and Italians on Ebikes who maybe do a single uplift and then pedal to the gelato and coffee spots, not to motivated aspiring racers training full day for their next full race season.

Newcomers to the sport tend to be motorized and tend not to be interested in training and competition but just doing it as leisure activity.

Companies not selling loads of those bikes anymore makes them spent less into development and marketing (racing is marketing). 
 

FOLLOWING IT AS A FAN
Coverage with highlights felt way better earlier and now is or more was fractured with Jesse, MoiMoi, Chaz and others doing loooong videos and the EWS or EDR organisation doing lame interview/results table/short passage over and over again kind of videos.

Some races even happened on Thursdays or whenever there was a spot besides XC and DH. So they race without any interest on-site or on-line because everyone had to work and the online media was bloated with XC and DH content.

Also Enduro lost it´s novelty, the early seasons around 2013 to maybe 2018 were super hot and exciting to watch because it was a new, unseen sport on great tracks and in great new places. Now it´s often the same over and over again.


PLACES
EWS was a holiday agency with ads for bike holiday places and for new Enduro-related bike tech with some racing involved.
They then sold it not to a travel company, but to a TV company.

That media company of course tried to make EDR a televisable race series with easier organisation i.e. long-term partnerships with the same overused venues. 

Which made races happen in the most boring Austrian bikeparks on 15 year old tracks and the same overused spots and tracks elsewhere as well all the time instead of putting in the effort to go to new, exciting places or at least make them built new tracks.

The spot of EWS and similar top level events was partially filled by other events, such as multi-day enduros, smaller more local series here in Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, France, Belgium which are quite often still working well as long as they aren´t as absurdly expensive for what you get as f.ex. the German run Chili Enduro Series is.
But these races and series also face the same problems when it comes to the lack of industry sponsorship and rider´s motivation and rider´s abilities to ride down and pedal up something else then flowtrails and fireroads with a motorized bike.)

That wasn't a rebrand. Before the Series was called the Enduro World Series. Then when it came under the World Cup vanner as part of the MTB world series the UCI and WBD started using the disciplines new UCI code which was EDR. 

I always thought it was odd to be honest. As we never say DHI. And only sometimes use XCO , XCC etc...

You got 2 Negative Reps from that glorious post. And here's little old me making the awful chop job hoodie logo to validate the Mondaker rumour 2 years past.

I am truly belittled and gleeful all at once!!! 🤣
 

I'd watch enduro athletes have to race down a DH track on their enduro bikes. At least it's something I could watch as opposed to the sh*t live timing they have now. And all the cameras are already setup for the DH race. They could mix in some other stages that aren't televised to keep it an "enduro" race. 

Better than no racing on an enduro bike at all. 

Gotta love those old 80's JT ads. Fond memories of The Great Gazoo bubble helmets that they had BMX pros wearing back then and in the pages of BMXA. Thank you for that post!

I loved racing enduro...  but, I always thought it was a participation sport.  Much like the local 5k that gets 2,000 entries and no one cares about finishing time except maybe 15% of the entries, only media is how much it raised for whatever fund raising it was set up for.  

I will agree with Lee Trumpore, it did advance the bikes we ride today.  Enduro is true mountain biking to me, pedal everywhere and have fun.  I do not think e-bikes had anything to do with its demise but it is fun to blame them.  

To add when the UCI "officially" got involved, the whole thing of riders POVs and the Media Squibs, pre race, riding the segments dwindled/forcibly stopped (Thanks Chaz Maz for keeping the stage videos going). This to me took a huge chunk of the relatability of the racing and racers. 

Add in the trying to share venues with DH and XC. Though, there were some venues last year, trying to make a 10 day MTB festival with hosting the EDR/DH/XC. Hosting the EDR on the weekend prior to the DH & XC and not trying to run it mid week. 

Plus, and again in my opinion, the financial draw on limited industry resources which the current WB/Discovery/UCI which DH has or is becoming, is leaving little to nothing else left for Enduro. What we seem to be getting is a multi tiered series with XC and DH out on top and everything else on lower levels. Where before it was all treated as being even.

If i am not wrong enduro races for the public are still selling out, so its not an unpopular form of racing, its just its pro series has become disconnected. 

i still love enduro racing, i just think it evolved from its roots, but evolved in the wrong direction, now its starting to come back to its roots, but the world has moved on. Its not dead, its just lost its "underground cool." 

People either don't remember or never read the early interviews with CB.  He said early on that the plan was always to fold it back under the UCI banner.  He did it separately because the UCI wouldn't fund the experiment so he stepped out to do it on his own.

As for EWS itself, they lost the thread.  Yes, there has been a slowdown in the industry, but they got a little too big which forced sponsors to dedicate more and more resources.  We went from factory riders having limited support to full pit setups with 2-4 mechanics on site for every race  To fix that problem they started limiting the schedule to just the EU which killed the dreamer aspect.  Also separating the amateurs from the pros was another nail in the coffin.  Finally there has been zero creativity in coverage.  

First, they need to go back to parc ferme so that teams can get by with a single mechanic onsite.  Only riders are allowed to work on bikes after the start of the race, maybe even after the start of practice.  This would greatly reduce the cost of supporting the riders and make non factory riders more competitive.

They should also sign a deal with Insta360, GoPro, etc and mandate that riders have to run a camera while footage is co-owned by EWS.  If they wanted to do near real time coverage they could have memory cards at each stage finish line to swap out of the top 20 riders so they could produce something quickly.  Add in a few static cameras and drone operators and they would have some really compelling coverage within 24 hours.  

All of this is just my opinion and worth what you are paying for it right now.