Four days ago we asked whether Ventum’s 32-inch prototype could win Leadville. We have an answer now, and it’s not the one that makes for a clean headline: it didn’t. Mike Woods brought the bike home 14th at the Leadville Trail 100 MTB in his first-ever mountain bike race. Keegan Swenson won, on a standard 29er, with nothing bigger than a Roval Control World Cup wheel anywhere near his bike.

So the format that had us watching Saturday closely didn’t produce a fairy tale. It produced something more useful — a real data point instead of a teaser photo.

Quick Take

Mike Woods, Ventum 32in prototype	14th overall, 5:35:12 — top Canadian finisher, first-ever MTB race
Emma Langley, Ventum 32in prototype	Also raced the bike alongside Woods, also finished 14th in her field
Winner, elite men	Keegan Swenson, 5:20:26, on a standard-wheel S-Works Epic 9 — record-tying 6th straight Leadville title
Runner-up, elite men	Matt Wilson, same time, lost the sprint by inches
Winner, elite women	Melisa Rollins, 5:58:43, after a first-lap crash dropped her to last
32-inch wheels in the win?	No. Zero. Not close.
Confirmed by	Escape Collective, Canadian Cycling Magazine, Bikerumor, Brujula Bike, Pinkbike, Singletracks

The Result: 14th, Not First, and Honestly Not Bad

Let’s be fair to Woods before we’re skeptical of the wheels. 14th overall, 5:35:12, top Canadian in the field — for a guy who had never lined up for a mountain bike race in his life, that’s a legitimately strong debut. He’s a former WorldTour road pro who’s spent this season doing gravel, and he put himself ahead of a start list stacked with people who’ve raced Leadville a dozen times on bikes they understand intimately.

But 14th isn’t the story we were teed up for four days ago. The Instagram tease, the inverted Intend fork, the Flight Attendant on both ends — all of that was building toward “could this thing actually win.” It didn’t win. It didn’t podium. It finished a solid mid-pack result on a bike three weeks old, ridden by someone with three weeks of mountain bike experience, total, ever.

That gap matters. Fourteenth place tells you the bike is functional and the rider is a serious athlete. It tells you close to nothing about whether 32-inch wheels are actually faster than 29ers at Leadville, because you can’t separate “new wheel size” from “brand-new mountain biker on unfamiliar equipment three weeks after picking it up.” Those two variables are tangled together in every minute of that 5:35:12.

What Actually Won: The Boring Answer

Keegan Swenson took his sixth straight Leadville title, tying David Wiens’ record set between 2003 and 2008. He did it on a standard-wheel S-Works Epic 9 — Specialized’s newest XC race bike, running Roval Control World Cup wheels, SRAM Eagle Transmission, and Specialized Air Trak tires. No 32-inch anything. No inverted fork. No electronic suspension tuning wired to an unproven wheel size. Just a very good rider on a very well-sorted, entirely conventional race bike, riding it well enough to out-sprint Matt Wilson to the line after 5 hours and 20 minutes of racing — the first time in six wins Swenson’s needed a sprint to close it out.

That’s the part that should temper any 32-inch enthusiasm coming out of this weekend. The winning formula at the actual front of the race was the same formula that’s worked every year: standard wheels, dialed pacing, a sprint finish decided by legs and positioning, not wheel diameter. Bradyn Lange took third, John Gaston fourth, Andreas Seewald rounded out the top five just over a minute back — an entire top five of standard-wheel bikes.

Melisa Rollins Had the Better Story

The women’s race produced the more dramatic day, and it had nothing to do with 32-inch wheels either. Rollins went down in a crash inside the first six miles, dropped to the back of the field, and rebuilt her way through it to win in 5:58:43 — nearly five minutes clear of Cecily Decker, who was closing hard until a late flat tire cost her the gap. It’s Rollins’ second Leadville title, and by most accounts the more compelling race of the day: a comeback from dead-last against a clean, uneventful men’s race that came down to a photo finish.

Neither winning ride touched the 32-inch format. If you’re tracking wheel-size hype against actual race outcomes, that’s two-for-two in favor of “wheel size didn’t decide this.”

Where Woods Actually Lost Time

Nobody’s published a split-by-split breakdown of where the 14th-place gap opened up, and that’s worth saying plainly rather than guessing at numbers that don’t exist yet. What we do know, from our pre-race coverage, is the handicap Woods was riding into this with: an inverted Intend fork format nobody has tuning data on, RockShox Flight Attendant tuned for a wheel size it’s never seen before, an unidentified scalloped-tread tire nobody’s raced before, and — critically — three weeks on the bike total, on a course he’d only recently learned. Compare that to Swenson, who’s building toward a seventh straight win on equipment and a course he could probably ride blind.

The rollover advantage a 32-inch wheel is supposed to provide matters most on chunky, punchy terrain. Leadville’s 2026 course, rerouted around wildfire damage and stripped of the Powerline climb, was largely fire road and doubletrack — exactly the terrain where a bigger wheel’s advantage shrinks, because there’s less to roll over in the first place. If 32-inch wheels have a case to make, this course didn’t hand them the best possible stage to make it on.

Emma Langley Rode One Too

Woods wasn’t the only rider on a Ventum 32-inch prototype. Emma Langley, also Ventum-sponsored, raced the bike in the women’s field and, per multiple reports, also landed 14th in her own race. Two riders, two prototypes, two identical finishing positions in their respective fields — that’s either a coincidence or a sign that the bike performs consistently regardless of who’s on it. Worth watching for, not worth concluding much from yet on a sample size of two.

What Do We Actually Know About 32-Inch Wheels After Leadville?

Here’s the honest accounting, separated from the hype cycle that built up around this bike over the last week:

1. A 32-inch prototype can finish a 100-mile race competitively. Woods didn’t blow up, didn’t DNF, didn’t have a mechanical disaster. The bike held together for over five and a half hours of racing.
2. It didn’t come close to winning, or podiuming, or cracking the top 10. Fourteenth is respectable for a debut rider. It’s not evidence the wheel size is faster than what won.
3. The winning bikes at the front, in both races, ran standard wheels. Swenson’s Epic 9 and Rollins’ setup did the job that’s worked for years — no format change needed at the sharp end of the field.
4. The variables aren’t isolated. New rider, new bike, unfamiliar tires, three weeks of testing — any one of those could explain the gap to the podium on its own. You can’t credit or blame the wheel size specifically from one race.
5. The tire mystery from our first post is still unresolved. Maxxis remains the only production 32-inch tire option, and whatever Woods and Langley raced on wasn’t that tire. No public data exists on what those scalloped-tread tires actually do on race day.
6. The format’s still young. It’s been barely seven months since the UCI cleared 32-inch wheels for XC racing at all. One prototype’s mid-pack finish at one non-UCI marathon race isn’t close to enough racing to know where this format tops out.

The Course Asterisk Still Applies

We flagged this before the race and it’s still true after: 2026 wasn’t a normal Leadville course. The wildfire reroute cut roughly 2,000 feet of climbing and pulled the Powerline climb — the race’s signature technical test — entirely. A fast, flat-biased course is a reasonable place for a bigger wheel’s momentum advantage to show up. It’s a worse place to prove rollover superiority over technical terrain, because there wasn’t much technical terrain to roll over. Whatever conclusion you draw about 32-inch wheels from this result, draw it with that caveat attached.

What We’re Watching For Now

Whether Ventum says anything about a real MTB program. A 14th-place prototype debut is a stronger foundation for “we’re building this for real” than a photo tease was. If Ventum follows up with any hint of a production timeline, that’s the actual news, not the finishing position itself.

Split data, if anyone publishes it. A climb-by-climb or segment breakdown of Woods’ race against the leaders would tell us far more than the finishing time alone. Right now we have a single number and a lot of context around it.

What Woods says about the bike itself. He’s headed back to road racing — the 2026 UCI Road World Championships in Montréal are next on his calendar — so a detailed post-race breakdown from him specifically about how the 32-inch wheel felt over 100 miles would carry real weight, coming from someone with zero incentive either way.

Whether a second 32-inch tire manufacturer shows up. Until there’s more than one production tire option, the format stays a curiosity riders can’t actually buy into, whatever a prototype does at one race.

The Bottom Line

Ventum’s tease asked a good question and Leadville gave a clear, if unglamorous, answer: 32-inch wheels didn’t win, didn’t podium, and weren’t anywhere near the sharp end of either race. Mike Woods’ 14th is a genuinely solid debut for a rider three weeks into mountain biking on equipment three weeks old — that’s a story about Woods as an athlete more than it’s a story about wheel diameter. Keegan Swenson’s sixth title, on a standard S-Works Epic 9 with nothing exotic bolted to it, is the actual proof of what wins Leadville right now: dialed pacing and a rider who knows exactly what his bike will do in the last mile.

The 32-inch format isn’t dead. One prototype, one debut rider, one wildfire-shortened course isn’t enough data to bury a wheel size on. But it’s not the breakout moment the teaser photos were angling for either. File this one under “watch, don’t bet” — same advice we gave four days ago, just with a finishing time attached to it now.

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Results and reporting sourced from Escape Collective, Canadian Cycling Magazine, Bikerumor, Brujula Bike, Pinkbike, and Singletracks. No test bike has been ridden by our team at time of publication.