In its official season review published on 21 October 2026, the WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series puts Valentina Höll firmly back at the centre of women’s downhill. Racing for Commencal Schwalbe by Les Orres, the Austrian took six wins from nine rounds, added another rainbow jersey, and secured a fifth UCI Downhill World Cup overall title.
Six wins and a fifth crown
The useful bit for anyone following women’s gravity racing is the shape of it. Höll had moved to a new team and bike set-up over winter, and the series review says she answered the adaptation question quickly by winning the first three rounds of the season in succession.
Her 2026 run included victory at Saalfelden Leogang - Salzburgerland, where the women’s race closed a UCI Downhill World Cup round for the first time. The World Series says Höll was fastest through every split there and won by a considerable margin in front of a home crowd.
Lenzerheide briefly interrupted the pattern, with Höll finishing tenth as Anna Newkirk took her first UCI Downhill World Cup victory. Höll then won again at La Thuile - Valle d’Aosta and Pal Arinsal, making it five victories from six rounds.
By Les Gets, her points lead was already large enough that third place secured the Elite Women overall title with two rounds still to race. She went on to defend her UCI World Championship title, then won at Whistler Mountain Bike Park before ending the World Cup season second at Lake Placid.
The final tally was stern stuff: seven podiums, six victories and a fifth overall crown. The review notes she finished one win short of the all-time record of seven victories in a single Women’s Elite season, shared by Anne-Caroline Chausson and Rachel Atherton.
Ostgaard owns the junior picture
The same official review also gives Aletha Ostgaard a clear place in the next layer of the women’s downhill story. In Junior Women, the Canyon DH Racing rider stood on the podium at every UCI Downhill World Cup round, won at MONA YongPyong, La Thuile, Pal Arinsal, Les Gets and Whistler, and never finished lower than third.
Ostgaard secured the Junior Women overall title by 175 points. For women watching the pathway as well as the podium, that matters: the organiser’s own season wrap records both an established elite benchmark in Höll and a junior rider already being folded into the sport’s next chapter.