Kate Courtney

Born in 1995, Kate Courtney grew up riding tandem with her dad in the mountain biking mecca of Marin County, just over the Golden Gate Bridge from her birthplace of San Francisco. It wasn't until she was 14 that she started seeing mountain biking as a competitive option, though. She started racing in 2009 and won the XC Junior National Championships the next year. In 2012 she became the first US Junior woman to win a UCI XC World Cup stop. Courtney's momentum accelerated in 2013, the year she started college (Stanford) and signed her first pro contract. That year she claimed victories at the Pan-American Championships, the US XC and Short Track Nationals, the UCI World Cup stop at Mont Sainte Anne, and she swept the cross-country and short-track disciplines at the Collegiate Mountain Biking National Championships. Courtney finished eighth overall in the UCI World Cup series in 2014, her first season of U23 competition. In 2015, she jumped up to fourth overall, and she boosted to second in 2016. Along the way, she won her second Pan-Am Championship, earned more US and Collegiate titles, and claimed her first U23 World Cup win (Cairns, Australia 2016). After winning the American national U23 title, claiming victory in three of the five UCI XCO U23 World Cup events and claiming a silver at the World Championships in 2017, Courtney has stepped up to the Elite level on the World Cup scene for 2018 and immediately secured her first major victory in the famed Cape Epic marathon stage race in South Africa, alongside team-mate Annika Langvad. Her first World Cup season at elite level saw Courtney establish herself as a regular top 10 fixture in the hugely competitive Elite Women's class, but she delivered an historic performance at the 2018 UCI MTB World Championship sin Switzerland to ride away from the field and win the Elite Women's gold medal in her first attempt by almost 50-seconds, delivering the United States a first World Championships win in 17 years in the process. The 2019 season saw Courtney switch from the Specialized team to Scott-SRAM MTB Racing as team-mate of cross-country king Nino Schurter. Racing proudly with the world champ's rainbow jersey, she dominated the season-opening Albstadt race to win her first Elite Women's World Cup race and then added two more victories during the season as she raced to the overall World Cup series title for the first time. With winning more medals at the highest level and more World Cup successes on her to-do list, Courtney is going to keep racing hard to achieve her goals.