UK National Champion and World Championship top-five finisher, Isla Short chose the privateer path because the rewards feel sweeter when the project is entirely your own. When the circuit traveled to Asia for the first time, she went looking for more than a start line. What followed was an escape from the familiar, tiny universe of the World Cup circus — via bullet train, Seoul's temples, a rain-destroyed course and a car park that said more about Korean culture than any race result could.

The term ‘World Cup’ is so closely linked to football that people often appear aghast when I tell them that I compete at up to ten World Cups every year. As a professional cross country mountain biker, that’s my normal. Our season begins in May and ends in October, the majority of rounds taking place in central Europe, and book-ended by two overseas blocks. A World Cup consists of two events: the XCC (short-track) and the XCO (olympic distance). XCC is 20 minutes of dodging handlebars, burning lungs and problem solving. It’s a disgusting discipline but when you get it right, it’s very rewarding. The top 24 placings in the XCC will be gridded as such in the XCO; 90 minutes of, well, basically the same thing, but with a little more breathing and thinking space. Both events are mass start and take on a number of laps of a purpose built track (1.5km and 3.5km approx in XCC and XCO respectively). Fastest to complete the laps wins. Simple. 

As with most cycling disciplines, XC MTB racing is primarily built on the existence of professional teams, and riders will travel around the World Cup circuit this way. There is an assumption from both inside and out that securing a place on one of these teams is the ultimate goal. As a privateer navigating this circus largely by myself, I guess I’m an exception to the rule. Having had experience both as a privateer in 2019 - 2022 and as a rider on a factory team in 2023 and 2024, I’ve seen both sides of the coin. In 2025 I was forced back into a privateer setup and what followed was the most successful season of my career. In 2026 I found myself in the unique position of being able to choose: return to a team with everything taken care of for me, or continue on this unorthodox path of independence, creativity and honestly, really hard work.

It’s hard to argue that racing independently hadn’t been working for me last season, so I chose the lone wolf path. It’s definitely more challenging in many ways: I am athlete, logistics manager, content creator, budgeter, and my list of admin is never ending. In return though, I have a huge amount of agency and freedom and the rewards are so much sweeter because of what I invest. My privateer project is my baby and I’m so incredibly proud that I can take it around the world with me. 

 I have one unpaid intern at Short Factory Racing. His name is Dad and he has been hired, sacked and rehired many times. Joking aside, I couldn’t run this kind of setup without his support and I’m so grateful that I have his backing and faith that this is the right way for me to discover my full potential as a bike racer. It’s not always straightforward; we exist first and foremost as father and daughter, but when we are working together in a professional environment, where the stakes are high and the margin for error is slim, it’s hard to navigate that dual relationship. We do a pretty good job though! After fifteen years traveling across the country and around the world together, we are a pretty dialled little team of two. He’s the only person I trust to hand me my bottles during a race successfully, and more importantly, he understands my brain, my quirks and my challenges more than most. That’s how we ended up on a ski slope in South Korea in the pouring rain, covered in mud, faultlessly carrying out bottle changes at the first World Cup of 2026. 

The XC World Cup circus traveled to Asia for the very first time this year. This represents a big change for XC MTB, and a positive one. The WC series has historically been localised within central Europe, sporadically traveling to Canada, the US and very occasionally, south of the equator. We’ve been traveling to the same venues for a long time, and we get used to them. We no longer notice the views or seek out cultures that differ from our own: we are so at home in these places that we forget to engage with them in any meaningful way. Or at least that’s how I feel! When a World Cup in South Korea was announced it offered an opportunity to renew the sense of adventure that should be so much a part of riding our bikes in new places. As it turned out, the race venue in Mona YongPyong was a little secluded and it would have been easy to spend the entire week existing in the familiar, tiny universe that makes up the World Cup circus, so my dad and I went in search of some culture via the bullet train.

In many ways, it is actually easier to navigate a trip this big as a privateer than it is on a team. Traveling as a pair, cooking for two, looking after one bike and one athlete. There’s a freedom that exists that it’s much harder to find when you’re operating in a big group. I felt a little smug that my dad and I were able to escape the racing environment to explore Seoul, to marvel at the beautiful temples and wander through Insadong main street, a quirky pedestrianised street lined with Korean art, food and fashion.

I felt so glad that we’d made the effort to see some Korean culture, especially as I hiked and dragged my bike around the track on XCO race day, joining in a collective battle of physical and emotional attrition with the other competitors whilst my Dad stood dutifully in the feedzone with my next bottle. A heavy rainstorm destroyed the freshly built loam and turned our beautiful (very Isla friendly) course into a walking race.

19th in XCC and 20th in XCO. But those aren’t the interesting stories from South Korea. We explored the Korean way of life in a small way alongside preparing for a World Cup. One day we got stuck in an E-Mart carpark and had to get help from customer service. We had four cars lined up behind us waiting to leave, and not one of them beeped their horn at us; one man even got out to help. That’s really what we went for, to explore the contrast between British and Korean culture.



Photography: Piper Albrecht