The men's cross-country mountain biking at the 2008 Summer Olympics took place at the Laoshan Mountain Bike Course on August 23, 2008.

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

Julien Absalon Julien Arnaud Absalon (born 16 August 1980) is a French cross-country mountain biker. Career 2003: Absalon won his first UCI Mountain Bike World Cup. 2004: Gold at World Champions and the Athens Olympic Games. 2005: Absalon again won the Wor ...

pulled away from a pack of mountain bikers at the start to defend his Olympic title in the event with a gold-medal time in 1:55:59. Absalon also enjoyed his teammate

Jean-Christophe Péraud Jean-Christophe Péraud (born 22 May 1977) is a retired French cyclist who rode for and during his professional career. He was a member of the French team at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics. Career Péraud was European cross-country champ ...

taking home the silver in 1:57:06, as the Frenchmen climbed on top of the podium with a spectacular 1–2 finish. Meanwhile, Switzerland's

Nino Schurter Nino Schurter (born 13 May 1986) is a Swiss cross-country cyclist who races for the SCOTT-SRAM MTB Racing Team. Schurter won the world championship in men's cross-country in 2009, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022 and the ...

delivered an exciting sprint challenge for the bronze in 1:57:52, edging out his teammate, three-time Olympian and reigning world champion Christoph Sauser by two seconds. Among the 50 mountain bikers who competed in the cross-country race, only twenty-eight of them managed to complete the full distance.

Competition format

The competition began at 15:00 with a mass-start in which riders are positioned according to their current world ranking so that the higher-ranked riders are near the front. The cross-country race also involved eight laps, with 172 m of elevation change for each, around the 4.45 km course at Laoshan Mountain Bike Course. The overall distance of the race was 35.60 km.

Schedule

All times are

China standard time The time in China follows a single standard time offset of UTC+08:00 (eight hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time), even though the country spans almost five geographical time zones. The official national standard time is called ''Beijing T ...

(

UTC+8 UTC+08:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +08:00. With an estimated population of 1.708 billion living within the time zone, roughly 24% of the world population, it is the most populous time zone in the world, as well as a ...

)

Results

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's cross-country Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics Cycling at the Summer Olympics – Men's cross-country 2008 in mountain biking Men's events at the 2008 Summer Olympics