The past Downhill World Cup season was a mixed bag for Austrian Valentina Höll. At first, she couldn't find her rhythm and struggled with her performance, although she regularly rode onto the podium. But she just didn't want to win. Then, at the end of July, her racing team YT Mob went bankrupt after the German bike manufacturer Young Talent Industries filed for insolvency. Höll, like her teammates Andreas Kolb and Oisin O'Callaghan, was left with many of the running costs. The tide only turned at the World Championships in Champéry. Höll confidently won her fourth Elite World Championship title en suite as a privateer and, to top it off, the overall World Cup rankings for the fourth time at the races overseas.

As a birthday present, so to speak - the Saalbach native turns 24 on December 11 - there is now an official team change on top. Höll will ride for the French Commencal Schwalbe by Les Orres racing team in future. This is probably mainly for personal reasons. The team is managed by Cécile and Cédric Ravanel. Cécile, herself a former three-time Enduro World Champion, has been Höll's personal coach for many years and is an important support for the athlete, as she has emphasized several times in interviews. In the new racing team, the Austrian will also be team-mates with Swiss rider Lisa Baumann. This means that the reigning world champion and the reigning 2026 European champion will ride in the same team.

Young and rather small team

Commencal Schwalbe by Les Orres was founded in 2005 by Cédric Gracia, the legendary downhiller from Andorra. It is actually a young team that has so far mainly enabled young riders to enter the professional business. Höll is a newcomer who is already at the top of the sport. The coming season will show whether and how this will be compatible. The main sponsors of the comparatively modest racing team are the bike manufacturer Commencal from Andorra, the German tire manufacturer Schwalbe and the French Alpine resort of Les Orres, where the team's official headquarters are located.

For the 24-year-old Höll, this is the third professional team in her eleven-year career. She signed her first contract with YT Industries at the age of just 13. After a brief interlude with RockShox Trek from 2021 to 2023, she returned to the Forchheim-based company in 2024. The bankruptcy last July also caught her unprepared and it was only thanks to the active help of her personal sponsors such as Red Bull that she was able to finish the past season so successfully. However, she had to accept "considerable financial losses", as she says. But from now on, her focus is on the future, explains Höll on the occasion of the announcement of her team change: "Away from the background noise, back to the essentials - racing."

"Great honor and joy" for Max Commencal

Her new boss, Max Commencal, is delighted with the new addition from Austria: "We all welcome Vali with enormous enthusiasm. It is a great pleasure and honor to have her in our team." Höll can also hardly wait to get started with a new bike and a new team: "I'm looking forward to continuing my downhill success story on a Commencal." Her future work tool will be the Meta Supreme DH V5 and she feels right at home on it: "When I rode the bike for the first time, it was love at first sight, it's safe and stable and yet so playful."

In sporting terms, Höll could provide an important boost for the new team. In the past season, her colleagues and teammates always missed out on podium places, but often only just. Only junior Matilda Melton managed a second place in Lake Placid. Höll could provide the necessary motivational boost to carry the whole team along with her. She herself wants to pick up where she left off in 2025. The new start on Commencal should make it possible.