'This feels like the most turbulent, hard year I've ever had' – Evie Richards conquers difficult 2025 as most successful female short track rider ever

It has been a whirlwind week for Evie Richards. On Friday, the Red Bull athlete was racing her final short-track mountain bike race of the season, coming second, then on Sunday she finished third in her last Olympic cross-country (XCO) race of the year.

This was the final round of the Whoop UCI Mountain Bike World Series for 2025, in Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada, where Richards had just won the short track World Series for the first time. But the week didn't end there.

"It’s been busy," the 28-year-old, who rides for Trek Factory Racing, tells Cycling Weekly. "You never sleep much after the short track, just because there's so much adrenaline, and the race is always finished quite late, especially after drug testing. And then we had the XCO, and then we partied loads, and then we drove home.

"I swear we left on Monday morning, and we got back Tuesday evening, and then with jet lag as well. I'm not sleeping much. So it's been like a bit of a whirlwind couple of days, really. I'm quite excited to go to Greece and just to sleep and catch up on some rest, really."

Now, she is back at home in Malvern, on the border between England and Wales, where she celebrated her mum's birthday, in between recovery. It's quite far removed from the trails of Québec, where she was on Sunday.

"When I come back to Malvern, I just sink back into normal life, not like you forget, but like you see a picture or someone comments on Instagram, you're like, ‘Oh, I just did that’," Richards explains. "When I come home, you kind of do forget a bit what's just happened, really. I’m back to being Evie at home, but a content Evie at home, if that makes sense."

2025 might have been the two-time world champion's best season yet. There were two short track World Cup victories, plus the overall, nine more podiums at World Cups across XCO and short track, and she finished fourth in the XCO standings too. However, to Richards, it hasn't felt so straightforward.

"Someone said to me halfway through the year, ‘Oh my gosh, you're having an incredible year’," the Red Bull athlete recalls. "I just remember thinking that this feels like the most turbulent, hard year I've ever had. I feel like I say that every year, but I just can't believe what I've achieved through everything."

The turbulence came from illness, which took her out of the Val di Sole round of the World Cup, and affected her riding.

"When I got into January, I said to the psychologist: ‘This is the best off season I've ever had’," Richards says. "I’d done everything I wanted. I hadn’t been sick in a year, and everything had gone perfectly. I realised that maybe that's not actually a good thing.

"Sometimes, when you escape all the illnesses and everything, your body hasn't got that immunity to fight things off when you're at the races and you're like, really run down and you're interacting with loads of fans."

Despite that, it was one of her better years. There might not have been the World Championships success of previous seasons, but it is still notable that she was up there throughout. What could a healthy Richards have achieved?

"I was really unlucky, and got sick loads, and I never fully recovered," she says. "I'm so shocked that I managed to achieve what I did, because I just never felt like I reached my potential with my fitness. I feel really proud that I achieved those results while not being how fit I wanted to be.

"It’s crazy, because my coach said that this is my most consistent year. How I managed to do that is beyond me, but that's really cool. Maybe that has come with age, just being able to manage the races better and know my body better during the races, rather than actually being fitter than I've been."

Richards is a history maker, the first-ever British rider to win the XCO World Championships, the first ever to win the short track Worlds, and now, the most successful female rider in short track World Cup history, taking her seventh win this year. The previous record holder was the small matter of Pauline Ferrand-Prévot. She should be a household name, and it's MTB's relative niche that ensures she isn't; possibly the most famous person from Malvern since Elgar.

It's notable, then, that Richards and her team didn't even think short track was for her; now she is the one to beat in the discipline. Short track races last around 25 minutes, on a similar but not the same course as the traditional XCO race; they take place on the Friday before Sunday's marquee event, and are a blur of action.

"You just have to be in the right position the whole race," she explains. "It's so hard to be in that position, because it feels that everyone can do that speed, everyone can do that speed for so long, and then people start dropping off the last two laps.

"You've really got to be up there in case a break goes and it is really hard when you've got 15 women fighting for the front and that's what I sometimes find hard. It’s challenging because you've got to make so many decisions and be focused for the whole time."

"We did loads of simulating races in lockdown, because we thought I’d be terrible at it," Richards reveals. "I hate riding in a group, I hate the pressure of an attack at the end, I hated everything about it. It’s kind of the reason I don’t like road racing, I don’t like group riding. I’d rather just try and get a break and ride on my own. We did loads of practice over lockdown, and then I won the first two rounds in Nové Město [in 2021] and it was actually so fun.

"In XCO, there are times I’m dying, it’s so hard. But with short track, I love the burn it gives you, I love the sprint finishes, the adrenaline is insane. The anticipation of waiting and waiting to go for a sprint. It’s funny, because we didn’t think I would be suited for it or would enjoy it, but now it’s my favourite race to do."

Overall World Series victory was not even on Richards's mind for this year, but she stepped into the red leader's jersey from the beginning, and never gave it up; by the end she was racing for that rather than just results at each World Cup.

"I found it really exciting, because I honestly had never really thought about the overall," she says. "Especially after I missed one of the races, I was like, ‘God, it's going to be near to impossible.’ When it got close to the end, I really wanted to win overall, I think I felt more pressure at every race."

Her season might be over, Greece beckons, but so does a "quite busy" off-season, which will be over in the blink of an eye.

"I just bought a house which I need to renovate," Richards says. "There's no heating or hot water and I'm washing up outside, so that will need to be done at some stage. I'm taking my mum to Greece tomorrow, and then I've got some work in the UAE. I'd like to see my friends in Devon and Cornwall, and I've got quite a lot of plans. I normally really pack it in. I like to go to the hairdressers, there's loads of things I want to do.

"Then I’ll go to Girona for training, and then team camp is in January. It comes round pretty quick. I definitely need to get a kitchen in, because I think I’m hosting Christmas this year. I’m going to try and be home a bit as well as jetting off everywhere."

It's that simple, and then Richards will start 2026 as she ended 2025, one to watch in short track and XCO, just hoping for a season with less illness this time around.