Vali Höll is moving on to new endeavors after three remarkable years with the RockShox Trek Race Team
In three seasons as a rider for the RockShox Trek Race Team, Vali Höll won eight MTB World Cup races, two World Cup overalls, and two World Championships — all before the age of 22. Vali will be racing for a new team in 2024, but we can’t thank her enough for everything she accomplished aboard a Trek Session. Before our eyes, she became one of the most dominant riders in mountain biking.
That Vali won big after joining RockShox Trek isn’t a surprise. She was a two-time junior World Champion, after all. But she was still a young athlete — just 19 years old, and still finishing her studies — who had plenty to learn about being an elite racer when she signed with the team. Before her first season, she spoke about not feeling like a “pro” quite yet.
Watch RockShox’s goodbye to Vali and the RockShox Trek Race Team:
Vali quickly established herself as one of the fastest riders in the sport, taking second at her first World Cup race in Leogang, in front of a home Austrian crowd. She took the podium four more times in 2021, including back-to-back breakout wins in Snowshoe that pushed her to No. 1 in the overall standings.
Vali entered 2022 with big expectations on her shoulders, but struggled, at first, to find the level she’d become accustomed to, placing no higher than fourth through the first four World Cup races of the year. Then at Round 5 in Andorra, she finally secured her first win of the season. The difference? Vali said she learned to loosen up, and race with the same joyful abandon that had defined her earliest days racing downhill.
She went on to win two more times in 2022, none bigger than her first World Championship in Les Gets, when she secured the gold medal by almost one full second over Nina Hoffmann.
Vali's stunning victory in Fort William.
The rainbow stripes only spurred Vali on. In 2023, she firmly stamped herself as one of the best racers in the world, winning four World Cup races for another overall title, and dominating the competition at World Championships by more than two seconds on the famed track at Fort William.
All the while, she received top notch support in every sense from RockShox Trek staff. She and her teammates, Tegan Cruz and Jamie Edmondson, leaned on one another, and all developed in profound ways as young riders and human beings. The team is coming to an end, but its legacy will cary on in its former athletes.
Vali is already a legend of the sport — easily one of the singular riders and personalities in mountain biking. We wish her all the best in her next endeavor.
