What mountain bikes do Canyon’s pro teams ride?

We believe in fast. When Radsport Arnold became Canyon in 2002, it took us just six years to start selling more bikes outside our native Germany than inside. Athletes and racing have always been at the heart of what we do. Since those early days, we have been proud to work with the best athletes in the world trying to help them go faster. Today we are the world’s largest direct-to-customer manufacturer of road bikes, mountain bikes, triathlon bikes, gravel bikes, hybrid bikes, and electric bikes, which means we can support even more athletes and teams to pursue their dreams of speed. 

Working with athletes is a responsibility we take seriously. When they hand you their trust, they need to be rewarded with bikes that can take them as far as their ambition. We think our bikes’ palmares speak for themselves, with multiple world championship titles, World Cup wins and much more. Today, if you buy a racing bike from Canyon you trust that it has been proven at the highest levels of competition. 

Triathlon may not be too popular amongst mountain bikers, but it forever changed how we develop our bikes. Working with the legendary Jan Frodeno, our CFR - Canyon Factory Racing engineers learned first-hand the value of athlete-driven development, and it has stayed at the heart of what we do ever since . The built-in hydration system we developed for Jan was the first innovation of many.  

You can see this DNA running through our mountain bikes. From the featherweight 3.6g chainguide on the World Championship-winning Lux World Cup CFR to the replaceable inserts on the pivot points of the World Cup-winning Sender CFR, we work hard on the little things as we know how much they matter to racers. We think the results speak for themselves

Winning is always our goal. Our mountain bikes and riders have done a lot of that over the years, but we realised that to make the best race bikes we needed a factory cross-country team. It is in the detail where winning bikes are made and a factory team allows us to work more closely than ever with the riders to perfect those details. That is why in 2022 we launched the Canyon CLLCTV XCO team.  

Led in 2025 by former Olympic champion, Jenny Risveds, the CLLCTV XCO is looking for a strong season. She is joined by junior prodigies Valentina Corvi and Noa Filippi and the short track holeshot king, Luca Schwarzbauer.  

With its 1,535g frame weight, ceramic bearings and aggressive geometry, the Lux’s details add up to the perfect full-suspension race bike for the team. When the courses are more focused on speed they use the Exceed hardtail for its uncompromising power delivery. 

We took our time to enter the World Cup DH scene. It would have been easy to hand out some frames here and there, but we wanted to show people how serious we are about downhill racing. In 2017 we unveiled the Canyon Factory DH Team, which is now known as CLLCTV DH.  

Opening the team’s palmares with a win at the Vallnord World Cup that same year, Troy Brosnan staked our intentions out for the world to see. In 2025 he is joined by American sensation Luca Shaw and French powerhouse and 2020 World Cup overall winner, Marine Cabirou.  

More than in any other mountain bike discipline, downhill is not just a constant race on track, but off track to find the perfect race bike and setup. Working closely with the team we have sweated every detail on the Sender CFR, down to how mud gathers on the frame in wet conditions, to create what we think is the fastest downhill bike out there.

Led by Mathieu Van Der Poel, Alpecin Deceunick bills itself as the fastest team in the world and has been partnered with Canyon since 2018. While they are best known for Van Der Poel’s stunning victories in road cycling and cyclocross, their mountain bike credentials are equally fearsome.  

In 2022 Sam Gaze swept both the short track and the marathon XC world titles, defending his short track title in 2023. In 2024, Puck Pieterse led the charge, securing the XCO world title (not to mention taking a stage win at the Tour de France Femmes). To win in all three disciplines of cross-country racing you need a fast and adaptable bike. For that, the team choose the Lux CFR.  

For 2025, Van Der Poel has announced that he will focus on the mountain bike World Championships, with a possible eye to a run at the 2028 Olympic mountain bike title. With road, cyclocross and gravel titles under his belt and a stellar Classics season behind him, we believe the Lux can take him all the way.  

Our factory downhill team was not our first gravity-racing factory team. In 2012, we launched the Canyon Factory Enduro Team led by Fabien Barel. A year ahead of the launch of global enduro racing with the Enduro World Series, we were proud to put together the most professional team on the then-emerging race circuit.  

In recent years the sport of enduro has been going through some big changes. Because of this, we have focused our support on a single rider - Jesse Melamed. If you are going to back a single rider, Jesse is exactly who you would want to back, the 2022 Enduro World Series champion is a podium threat on any and every course.  

Working closely with Fabien in 2012, we developed the unique Shapeshifter system for his Strive. This allowed this enduro race bike to change between distinct climbing and descending modes, making fewer compromises in his suspension setup. Race wins soon followed. Today an evolved version of this system is still at the heart of the Strive, and it is still the bike of choice for our fastest enduro racers.  

We hope you love racing as much as we do. It is our greatest pleasure to develop these bikes and see athletes reaching their potential on them - and that includes you. We work with these elite athletes to help us create bikes we think you will love too.  

With models like the Lux World Cup CF Young Hero for young, aspiring racers, to the Strive Underdog for up-and-coming enduro stars, we push to try and make racing-winning performance as affordable as possible.