I lost seventeen seconds in Albstadt last year because I second-guessed myself the night before. My mechanic and I had settled on a setup Vittoria Mezcal front, Barzo rear, 19 PSI front, 21 rear but I watched another rider on my team swap to something grippier after the morning recon lap, and I panicked. Changed to a heavier casing at the last minute. The course stayed dry. I carried an extra 140 grams per wheel for ninety minutes of racing, and on a course with that much climbing, I felt every gram.
That’s the thing about tire choice at this level: the decision itself can cost you more than the wrong rubber ever would.
Why Tires Matter More Than You Think (And Less Than You Fear)
Cross-country racing operates in a narrow performance window where marginal gains actually compound. Over a 90-minute World Cup effort, I might produce somewhere between 280 and 320 watts normalized power depending on the course profile. The difference between a fast-rolling tire and a grippy one might be 8-12 watts at race pace. That sounds small until you realize it’s the equivalent of showing up 3% heavier, or losing a week of taper, or starting with your heart rate already elevated.
But here’s what took me years to understand: the wattage cost only matters if you’re actually pedaling. A tire that rolls 10 watts slower but lets you carry speed through a technical section without braking can be faster overall. At Nové Město, with its punchy climbs and rooty descents, I’ve seen riders on “slow” tires gap the field through sections where everyone else was scrubbing speed. The math isn’t as simple as rolling resistance charts suggest.
What makes tires different from every other contact point on the bike is that they’re in constant conversation with terrain that’s changing beneath you. Your pedals and shoes stay the same from start to finish. Your tires encounter morning frost that burns off by lap three, dust that turns to paste when humidity rises, rocks that expose fresh edges as the field beats down the same lines. The rubber you chose at 8 AM has to perform in conditions you couldn’t fully predict. No other equipment decision carries that kind of environmental exposure.
The real cost of tire choice isn’t watts it’s confidence. If I’m thinking about my tires during a race, I’m not thinking about the rider on my wheel or the line through the next corner. And because conditions shift mid-race in ways I can’t control, I need equipment I trust to adapt without my attention. The best tire setup is often the one I trust enough to forget about entirely.
The Actual Variables That Matter
After eight seasons of racing internationally, I’ve narrowed my tire thinking to four variables that genuinely affect race outcomes. Everything else is noise.
The first is casing weight and construction. In XC, we’re typically running casings between 60 and 120 TPI, with lighter casings (higher TPI) offering better suppleness and lower weight at the cost of durability and sidewall support. I’ve moved away from the lightest casings available the ones marketed specifically for XC racing after too many sidewall cuts in rocky European venues. The 40-gram penalty for a more robust casing is worth it when it means I’m not nursing a slowly leaking tire for the final two laps at Leogang.
The second is tread pattern and knob height. This is where most people overthink things. For 80% of XC courses, a semi-slick or low-profile tread in the 2.2 to 2.35 width range handles everything competently. The Maxxis Ikon, Vittoria Mezcal, and Schwalbe Racing Ralph have all won World Cups for a reason they roll fast, corner predictably, and rarely surprise you. The remaining 20% of courses (think Val di Sole’s rocks or Snowshoe’s mud) require purpose-built rubber, but those are the races where everyone is making tire changes, so the advantage comes from getting the conditions read right, not from owning some secret tire.
The third variable is compound hardness. Softer compounds grip better but wear faster and roll slower. I’ve gone back and forth on this more than anything else. Right now, I’m running harder compounds than I did three years ago partly because my cornering technique has improved and I don’t need the rubber to compensate for poor line choice, partly because I’ve learned to accept slightly less grip in exchange for consistent behavior from lap one to lap six.
The fourth is pressure. This matters more than the other three combined, and it’s the one thing riders have complete control over on race morning. I’ll come back to this.
What I Actually Run (And Why It Keeps Changing)
I should be clear: I have contractual obligations that influence which brand of tires appears on my bike. That’s the reality of professional cycling. But within the range of products available to me, I have significant latitude in what I actually race on, and my team’s mechanics are experienced enough to know that forcing a setup on a rider who doesn’t trust it is counterproductive.
For most dry-condition World Cups, I’m running a combination similar to what many pros use: a slightly more aggressive front tire paired with a faster-rolling rear. The front tire does most of the steering work, and the confidence cost of a front-wheel washout is catastrophic you’re on the ground before you can react. The rear can slide a bit without disaster; you correct with body position and keep pedaling.
The specific models change year to year as manufacturers update their lineups, but the philosophy stays consistent: I want the front tire to be the last thing I’m worrying about in a technical section, and I want the rear tire to not punish me on the climbs. Right now that means something in the 650-700 gram range up front with moderate knob height, and something around 550-600 grams in the rear with a tighter tread pattern.
In muddy conditions, everything changes. Val di Sole in 2023, when it rained the night before that was a different sport. I went up to 780 grams front, 720 rear, with proper mud spikes. You give up 15-20 watts on the fireroad sections, but those sections don’t decide the race when the rest of the course is a slip-and-slide. What decides it is who can actually ride their bike through technical features while everyone else is running.
The Pressure Conversation
I used to run my tires too soft. I think most riders do when they first start taking racing seriously, because low pressure “feels” grippy in a way that’s immediately perceptible. You corner in your driveway, the tire squirms a bit, and you think: this is hooking up.
But what feels grippy at 8 mph doesn’t translate to what works at race pace. At 18-22 PSI (where I typically land for XC racing), a tubeless tire has enough sidewall support to hold a line through a corner without folding. Drop to 15-16 PSI and you gain compliance over roots and rocks, but you also introduce a vagueness in the front end that becomes terrifying when you’re descending at threshold heart rate with two riders on your wheel.
The right pressure depends on so many factors that I’ve stopped trying to give people numbers. My weight (around 68 kg race weight), my wheel and tire combination, the rim width, the specific casing I’m running, the terrain, the weather all of it matters. What I can say is that I’ve moved toward higher pressures over the years, not lower, and my lap times have improved. Part of that is better tires and rim technology. Part of it is learning to let the suspension do its job instead of asking the tires to absorb everything.
My current approach: I start with a baseline pressure I know works, and I adjust by 1-2 PSI based on course and conditions. That’s it. I check pressure with the same gauge every time, document what I ran in each race, and pay attention to how the bike felt in the first technical section. Over time, patterns emerge.
One thing I’ve learned from teammates: pressure preference is genuinely individual. I’ve ridden next to guys who are faster than me running pressures I’d find terrifyingly low, and they swear by it. Their body position, their cornering style, their risk tolerance it all feeds into what works for them. This is why I’m skeptical of anyone claiming to have “the answer” on tire pressure.
The Setup I Regret
In 2022, I showed up to a World Cup with prototype tires that I’d tested exactly once before the race. They were lighter, supposedly faster-rolling, and the team was excited about the technology. I wanted to be a good team player.
The rear tire burped air three times in the first lap. Not full flats just enough pressure loss that I had to stop, check, and re-inflate. The psychological damage was worse than the time cost. I spent the rest of the race waiting for the next burp instead of racing. Finished outside the points.
I learned two things from that experience. First, never race equipment you don’t completely trust, regardless of what anyone tells you about the data or the testing or the advantages. Second, the people making decisions about tire development aren’t the ones whose results depend on the outcome. That sounds cynical, and I don’t mean it harshly they’re doing their jobs, and sometimes you have to test things in race conditions to learn. But my job is to get results, and that requires a certain selfishness about equipment choices.
Now I have a simple rule: nothing new on race day unless I’ve ridden it hard at least three times in training conditions that approximate the race. This applies to tires more than almost anything else on the bike.
What’s Changed in Tire Technology (And What Hasn’t)
The tires available today are meaningfully better than what I started racing on. Tubeless technology has matured I can’t remember the last time I had a catastrophic sealant failure mid-race. Compounds have improved, offering better grip-to-rolling-resistance ratios than seemed possible a decade ago. Casing constructions have gotten smarter, with things like Maxxis’s EXO+ and Schwalbe’s newer radial casing designs offering better puncture protection without the weight penalty of earlier attempts.
But I want to be honest: the improvements are incremental, not revolutionary. A well-set-up tire from 2018 would still be competitive today. The fundamentals haven’t changed you’re still trying to put rubber on dirt in a way that generates traction and rolls efficiently. The marketing would have you believe each year brings a breakthrough. The reality is more like 2-3% improvements that accumulate over time.
The most significant change I’ve noticed isn’t in the tires themselves but in the ecosystem around them. Rim width has standardized around 30mm internal for XC, which means tires are more consistently shaped and supported than when we were running 21-23mm rims. Sealants have gotten better. Tire inserts exist for riders who want the extra protection, though I don’t use them for pure XC the weight penalty isn’t worth it for my riding.
Schwalbe’s radial casing technology is genuinely interesting. I’ve tested it, and it does feel different more compliant in a specific way that’s hard to describe. Whether it’s actually faster, I’m not sure yet. Early data suggests you need to run higher pressures to get equivalent support, which might offset some of the compliance benefits. I’m curious but cautious.
What I’m Still Figuring Out
I don’t have the tire question solved. Nobody does, and anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or hasn’t raced enough different conditions.
The thing I’m still working on is the mental side how to make equipment decisions without second-guessing them. I’m better at this than I used to be, but it’s still a weakness. I watch younger riders on my team show up with absolute confidence in their setup, race their bikes, and sometimes beat me. Part of that is talent. Part of it is not having accumulated enough bad experiences to create doubt.
I’m also uncertain about the trend toward wider tires in XC. The field has gradually moved from 2.0-2.1 toward 2.25-2.35 over the past five years, and I’ve followed that trend. But I sometimes wonder if I’m giving up free speed on courses that don’t require the extra volume. The wider tire has become the default because it’s more versatile and more forgiving but versatile and forgiving isn’t always fastest.
The compound question still nags at me. I run harder compounds than many of my competitors, and when I have a bad day in the corners, I wonder if softer rubber would have saved me. When I have a good day, I wonder if the harder compound was part of why. There’s no controlled experiment available.
The Advice I’d Actually Give
If you’re racing XC at any level below full professional, here’s what I’d tell you: pick a tire combination from one of the major brands, something in the middle of their XC lineup, and stop changing it. Run it for an entire season. Learn what it does in every condition. Get the pressure dialed for your weight and your local terrain.
You will learn more from consistent equipment than from chasing the optimal setup. The riders who improve fastest are the ones who control their variables and pay attention to what’s actually happening, not the ones constantly swapping parts hoping for a breakthrough.
When you’ve genuinely reached the limits of what your tires can do when you can honestly say you’re crashing because the rubber won’t grip, not because your technique isn’t there yet then you’ve earned the right to start experimenting. Until then, the tire is almost certainly not the problem.
The Feeling I’m Chasing
There’s a specific sensation when everything is working: you come into a corner at race pace, the front tire bites exactly where you expect it to, the rear follows through, and you exit with speed you didn’t have to manufacture. It’s not something you think about while it’s happening you just flow. The bike disappears. The tires disappear. There’s only the trail and the effort and the rider ahead that you’re about to catch.
That feeling is what all the tire obsession is ultimately trying to create. The irony is that you can’t think your way to it. You can set up your bike correctly, choose appropriate equipment, dial in your pressure and then you have to let go and ride.
The best tire setup I’ve ever had wasn’t my fastest in a lab test or my lightest on a scale. It was the one I completely forgot about for an entire race. I’d like to get back to that more often.