Canyon and component specialist DT Swiss have launched a new professional off-road racing team, Canyon × DT Swiss All-Terrain Racing (ATR).
Nicknamed ‘The Wildcards’, the 13-rider multidisciplinary team aims to disrupt the traditional siloed approach to off-road sport by competing across gravel, ultra-endurance, cyclocross, and marathon MTB.
The project signals a strategic move by Canyon to align with the increasingly fluid nature of modern endurance racing, where athletes like Mathieu van der Poel and Puck Pieterse have already demonstrated the performance benefits of a multi-discipline calendar.
Managed by Vincent Durand, formerly of the BULLS Racing Team, the roster features 13 athletes from five nations. The team focuses on riders with non-linear career paths – those who have transitioned between disciplines or emerged through unconventional development systems.
Key members of the 2026 squad include:
- Carolin Schiff (GER): 2024 Unbound Gravel winner.
- Alex McCormack (GBR): 2025 Atlas Mountain Race winner.
- Bradyn Lange (USA): US Gravel National Champion.
- Mathijs Loman (NED): 2025 UCI Gravel World Series overall winner.
- Juri Hollmann (GER): Former WorldTour professional returning from long-term injury.
The team saw its first competitive action this past weekend (February 14–15) at Santa Vall in Girona, the opening round of the Gravel Earth Series. In a muddy and technical edition of the race, the new squad secured two top-10 finishes in the Women’s General Classification.
Larissa Hartog finished 9th overall, while Nele Laing followed closely in 10th. In the men’s race, Bradyn Lange finished 18th in a high-calibre field won by Mads Würtz Schmidt. The event served as a proving ground for the team’s flexible equipment strategy, with riders utilizing the Canyon Grail CFR equipped with the new DT Swiss F 132 ONE gravel suspension fork.
Beyond the podium, the ATR team will serve as an R&D hub for technical partners, which include Shimano, Schwalbe, and Coros.
Gravel veteran Pete Stetina has joined the project in a dual role as mentor and lead product tester. Stetina will facilitate a direct feedback loop between the Wildcard riders and Canyon’s engineering team in Koblenz, using race data to iterate on prototype components under extreme fatigue and variable surface conditions.
The team’s primary focus for the first half of the season will remain the major gravel fixtures, specifically The Traka and Unbound Gravel.
For the squad’s ultra-endurance specialists, McCormack and Marei Moldenhauer, the calendar extends to self-supported events including the Unbound XL, Traka 560, and the Tour Divide.
The team has also confirmed it will invite ‘guest riders’ from other endurance sectors to join the Wildcards for specific performance-led challenges and FKT (Fastest Known Time) attempts throughout the year.
