yet almost all of them have zero comments from readers.

I suspect that’s more to do with the rather silly (IMHO) decision that only those with a little blue P can comment on front page stories. Often leads to the situation where there’s a nice big thread already running on a topic, and lo, STW publishes their take on it some days later. No comments from readers on the latter. Now, one can hardly expect STW to keep up with absolutely everything, of course, but the lack of comments on front page articles is a commercial decision, not an editorial one.

Pinkbike’s XC coverage is great, and many of the comments indicate the readers (who are not XC riders) appreciate the technical side of the bikes shown

I don’t race XC any more (not since I was a sponsored, expert class whippet in the 90s) but like to see the current XC bikes, and how things have progressed.

The climbs are already brutally steep, but could contain way more interesting features too

Plenty of tech climbs in some of the other courses by the looks of he the footage e.g the ‘expert’ climb at Novo Mesto. I’m looking forward to watching the Lenzerheide one as I’m guessing that will be full of natural tech.

I really hope xc does get more popular again. It’s the most accessible form of mtb racing so I don’t understand why more people aren’t frothing on it. I was so surprised when I got back into riding bikes last year at how small the fields were compared to when I last raced in the mid nineties.