Vali Höll won the Elite Women’s Downhill World Championship at Val di Sole on Saturday, August 30, on a Commencal Supreme DH V5 painted in an Austrian-flag scheme for the occasion. We covered the men’s race from the same weekend in our Jackson Goldstone bike check and mentioned Höll’s result in passing. It deserved its own story. She just tied Rachel Atherton for second-most Downhill World titles ever, and she did it on a bike carrying race-proven versions of gear we’ve already put through full reviews on this site.

Höll crossed the line roughly 1.7 seconds clear of runner-up and Commencal Schwalbe by Les Orres teammate Lisa Baumann, with Britain’s Hattie Harnden taking bronze. It’s Höll’s fifth consecutive elite World title, a run stretching back to 2022, and it moves her level with Atherton on the all-time list. Only France’s Anne-Caroline Chausson, with nine titles, has more. Nobody else in the sport’s history is within four.

Quick Take

Winner	Vali Höll, Elite Women’s DH World Champion, Val di Sole 2026
Margin	Roughly 1.7 seconds clear of the field
Titles	5th consecutive elite World Championship (2022-2026)
All-time rank	Tied 2nd with Rachel Atherton, behind Anne-Caroline Chausson (9)
Bike	Commencal Supreme DH V5, Austrian-themed livery
Fork	RockShox BoXXer Ultimate, Charger 3 damper
Shock	RockShox Vivid Coil Ultimate DH
Brakes	SRAM Maven Bronze, 4-piston, 220mm rotors
Wheels	Mullet — Schwalbe Magic Mary 29in front, Tacky Chan 27.5in rear
Also on the podium	Lisa Baumann (2nd), Hattie Harnden (3rd)
Best for	Riders who want to see a title-tying bike built mostly from parts you can already buy
Skip if	You’re after a full geometry or frame teardown — this one’s a components story

A Record That’s Been Coming for Months

Whistler Mountain Bike Park’s preview of Val di Sole called this one before it happened, flagging Höll as the rider chasing a fifth straight title heading into race week. She’d already won the World Cup overall the weekend before. Two titles inside eight days is its own kind of dominance, and honestly, the DH Worlds result almost read as a formality by the time she rolled down the start ramp.

It wasn’t. A 1.7-second margin at this level, on the Black Snake, against a field that includes her own teammate, is not a coast. Baumann qualified fastest going into the weekend, ahead of Harnden and Höll herself in that order. Höll found nearly two full seconds somewhere between Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon. That’s the run of a rider who treats “chasing history” as motivation rather than pressure.

Context matters here too. Höll’s previous team, YT Mob, folded under financial pressure heading into this season, and she landed at Commencal Schwalbe by Les Orres for 2026 — the same team as Baumann, which is why the runner-up on Saturday was also a teammate. A rider switching bikes, sponsors, and teammates in the same off-season and still winning the season’s biggest race isn’t a small thing. It’s arguably a bigger story than the title count itself.

What’s Actually on Höll’s Supreme DH V5

Commencal’s Supreme DH V5 is the frame the brand’s whole gravity program races, not a one-off built for this weekend. That’s worth stating up front, because it’s the opposite of the story we told a few days earlier about Martin Maes’s mega-mullet Orbea prototype — a one-off aluminum test mule with a bolt-on BB housing and about ten laps on it before Worlds. Höll’s bike is the production race platform Commencal’s whole roster runs, just built to her setup and finished in an Austria-themed paint job for the home stretch of her title defense.

Here’s the build:

1. Frame: Commencal Supreme DH V5, in an Austrian flag-inspired livery for the World Championship weekend.
2. Fork: RockShox BoXXer Ultimate with the Charger 3 damper. We spent a full review on the current BoXXer platform, where the headline update is the ButterWagon dimpled-stanchion treatment paired with a newer Charger 3.2 tune. Höll’s fork runs the Charger 3 damper rather than the newest 3.2 revision — a reminder that “what wins Worlds” and “what’s newest on the shelf” aren’t always the same fork.
3. Shock: RockShox Vivid Coil Ultimate DH. Same shock we flagged as underrated in our SRAM/RockShox 2027 DH ecosystem review — consistent compression damping through repeated hard impacts is exactly what a World Championship final demands on the fourth or fifth hit in a rock section, not just the first.
4. Brakes: SRAM Maven, 4-piston, on 220mm rotors — and specifically the Bronze tier, the entry point of SRAM’s three-level Maven lineup (Ultimate, Silver, Bronze). We reviewed the Maven B1 update in detail and came away impressed with the SwingLink Gold cam’s modulation gains across the whole range. Worth noting: the braking power and lever feel that matter most on a World Cup track come from the caliper and cam design, not the lever material. A World Champion running the cheapest Maven tier is a decent data point for anyone assuming they need the $349 lever to go fast.
5. Wheels: A mullet setup — 29-inch front, 27.5-inch rear — running Schwalbe Magic Mary up front and Tacky Chan out back. We put the Magic Mary radial through 1,000+ miles of testing and found it the grippiest tire we’ve run in wet and loose conditions, at the cost of rolling resistance and knob durability. Neither of those trade-offs matters much over a four-minute race run. The Tacky Chan rear is a more efficient, faster-rolling pairing for the drive wheel, which is the same front-grip, rear-efficiency logic we’ve seen show up on production mullet builds like Frameworks’ enduro/DH frame.

None of this is exotic. It’s the current state of the art in DH suspension, brakes, and tires, specced by a team that’s raced this platform all season and knows exactly what it wants from each part.

How Many DH World Titles Does Vali Höll Have Now?

Höll’s Val di Sole win is her fifth consecutive Elite Women’s Downhill World Championship, a streak running from 2022 through 2026 without a break. That result ties her with Britain’s Rachel Atherton for second-most all-time DH World titles, both trailing France’s Anne-Caroline Chausson at nine. The all-time top of that list now reads:

1. Anne-Caroline Chausson (France) — 9 Elite DH World titles
2. Rachel Atherton (Great Britain) — 5 Elite DH World titles (tied 2nd)
3. Vali Höll (Austria) — 5 Elite DH World titles, 2022-2026 (tied 2nd)

Chausson’s total was built across a different era of the sport, with a level of dominance nobody’s approached since. Höll is 21. She has time to chase it.

Why the Cheap Brake Detail Actually Matters

We made a version of this argument a few days ago about Jackson Goldstone’s stock, mostly-unmodified V10: the fastest bike at Worlds isn’t always the one with the most expensive, most exotic parts bolted to it. Höll’s Maven Bronze brakes are the same idea from a different angle. It’s not that the Ultimate lever is a bad upgrade — the carbon blade and lighter weight are real, if marginal, gains. It’s that the modulation and power improvements SRAM built into the B1 update live in the SwingLink Gold cam and the caliper, and both of those are shared across Bronze, Silver, and Ultimate. Paying for the top tier buys you weight savings and lever material, not stopping power.

That’s a useful thing to know if you’re building or upgrading a DH bike on a budget. Put your money into the fork, the shock, and tires that match your terrain, and don’t assume the top-shelf brake lever is doing more work than the cam design underneath it.

Who Should Care About This

Riders tracking the DH Worlds record book. Chausson’s nine titles have looked untouchable for years. Höll, at 21 and riding this consistently, is the first rider in over a decade with a realistic shot at getting within range of it.

Anyone shopping for DH brakes on a budget. Höll’s win on the Bronze-tier Maven is a real argument that the expensive lever isn’t where the performance lives. If you’re deciding between Maven tiers, the caliper and cam matter more than the material of the blade in your hand.

Riders comparing mullet tire setups. The Magic Mary front / Tacky Chan rear pairing on a World Championship-winning bike is a strong real-world validation of grip-up-front, efficiency-out-back logic for anyone building a mixed-wheel DH or enduro bike.

Who Should Skip This

Anyone after a frame-level tech story. Unlike Maes’s one-off mega-mullet prototype, the Supreme DH V5 is Commencal’s standard production race platform. There’s no new geometry or unreleased hardware to dig into here — the story is entirely in the component choices.

Anyone expecting full setup numbers. Suspension pressures, tire pressures, and rotor sizing beyond the confirmed 220mm front weren’t published by the outlets we sourced this from. What’s confirmed is confirmed. We didn’t guess at the rest.

The Bottom Line

Vali Höll won her fifth consecutive Elite Women’s Downhill World Championship at Val di Sole, tying Rachel Atherton for second on the sport’s all-time list behind Anne-Caroline Chausson’s nine titles, and she did it roughly 1.7 seconds clear of her own teammate. The bike underneath her — a production Commencal Supreme DH V5 running a BoXXer Ultimate fork, Vivid Coil Ultimate shock, entry-tier Maven brakes, and a Magic Mary/Tacky Chan mullet tire setup — is built almost entirely from parts we’ve already tested and written about individually. That’s not a coincidence. It’s what the current state of gravity racing hardware actually looks like when a team spends a season dialing it in instead of chasing a mid-week prototype swap.

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Reporting sourced from the UCI, Whistler Mountain Bike Park, and Pinkbike’s Val di Sole results coverage. No test unit has been ridden by our team at time of publication.