Golden beginnings – How Pinarello’s Dogma XC HT rose to the top of cross-country mountain biking

Pinarello launched the Dogma XC Hardtail in the run-up to the 2023 World Championships and it faced a baptism of fire on the trails of Glentress, Scotland as Pinarello’s latest XC race bike. While Great Britain's Tom Pidcock carved out yet another historic XCO win in the men's race aboard the full-suspension Dogma XC, it was the newly debuted Dogma XC Hardtail that rose to the occasion at the 2023 World Championship super event. Piloted by Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, the hardtail proved to be a formidable tool, with the French rider winning both the Short Track and XCO Women's World Championship titles.

Pinarello developed the hardtail for Ferrand-Prévot as part of her 2024 Paris Olympic Games bid. Its early success has since been further validated by XCO gold in the Paris Olympics and a first-place finish in the short track at the European Championships as well. To understand what makes Pinarello’s Dogma XC Hardtail such a dominant race bike, I brought it back to the Scottish trails where it first claimed gold.

The Dogma namesake has traditionally been reserved for Pinarello’s flagship road bikes — uncompromising race machines designed to win grueling Grand Tour stage races like the Tour de France. By bringing the Dogma name and its legacy into the mountain bike sphere, Pinarello’s intentions in cross-country were clear: to create a bike that would dominate the biggest cross-country races.

Pinarello’s road bikes are famous for their striking aesthetics and bold asymmetric frame designs; the same design language has been translated to mountain biking with the Dogma XC HT. Toray M40J carbon has been used to create a bold asymmetric frame design featuring staggered dropped seat stays to counterbalance pedaling forces and a unique third triangle to greatly increase the stiffness of the bottom bracket area, exactly what you need when you’re making a race-winning attack on a climb or sprinting for the line.

When designing the Dogma F road bike, Pinarello put handling first, and it’s clear a lot of consideration has gone into the geometry of the Dogma XC. Most of the geometry figures are size-specific, optimizing the Dogma XC across all sizes to maintain handling performance.

My medium bike features a 450mm reach, balanced with a short and snappy 425mm chainstay length, made possible by the bridgeless asymmetric seat stay and offset seat tube. The bottom of the seat tube sits in front of the bottom bracket shell and has an effective seat angle of 69.5 degrees. The frame is designed to be run with a 100mm-travel suspension fork and settles on a 67.75-degree head angle, varying by 0.25 as you move up or down the size range.

While the off-the-shelf bikes don’t come equipped with the sponsored components used on Ferrand-Prévot’s race-winning bike, the top-tier bike I am riding features a spec that’s ready to line up and race. In place of the Suntour Axon Werx 34 fork, Pinarello has specced Fox’s 32 FACTORY SC fork with its unique reversed arch for increased stiffness and the new ultra-smooth GRIP SL damper. It features 100mm of travel and has a three-position lockout lever on the handlebar to control the suspension.

Shimano sponsors the Ineos Grenadier team, so Ferrand-Prévot’s bike was equipped with a full Shimano XTR groupset; the production bikes also use XTR brakes but pair them with an SRAM XX SL electronic T-Type drivetrain.

The boutique P1 Race Technologies wheels have been swapped out for a lightweight DT XRC 1200 SPLINE wheelset shod with Maxxis Rekon Race tires. The finishing kit comprises Pinarello’s in-house Most carbon componentry, including the integrated Talon Ultra XC cockpit, which is used on both Pidcock and Ferrand-Prévot race bikes.

Many of the iconic features, including the Salmon rock roll and the rock gap jump of the demanding XCO course, have since been removed from the Scottish venue. However, while I can’t follow their exact tire marks, several sections of the race track still exist alongside the wealth of natural and man-made trails at Glentress, many of which featured in the Marathon and XCC course, including the new Masterplan trails: a 16km network of man-made trails built in 2023. These trails are more than enough for me to put the Dogma XC HT through its paces.

My route would take me on a long loop of Glentress’s undulating Black route before descending back to the start, sampling a mixture of trails to get a good feel for the bike. My ride kicked off at a far more leisurely pace than the racers did on the big day. As I rolled out from the start area, there was no elbow-to-elbow jostling for position, and I eased myself into the first big climb.

I was determined to keep the pace up, though, as after all, race bikes are designed to be ridden fast. The low weight and aggressive riding position helped quickly dispatch the first draggy forest track before getting stuck into the rough technical singletrack switchbacks that snake up the Tweed Valley hillsides.

These climbing trails are littered with steps and slippery roots that quickly punish poor line choice and badly timed pedal strokes by killing momentum; the last thing you want when your competitors are breathing down your neck, imaginary or not.

Though I’m not the best technical climber, the Dogma’s short rear end and snappy pedalling response made short work of the tight corners, helping me keep my pace high as I powered on to the highest point of my makeshift cross-country route.

At the top of Glentress, there is a tall mast that signals the top. While there was no sign of my pretend competitors, there wasn't time to hang around. With my heart rate still in the red, I dropped straight into the first descent.

The next series of trails are part of Glentress’s original red-graded, trail-center route and were revolutionary for UK mountain biking when they opened over 20 years ago.

It starts with a shallow singletrack trail that is frustratingly tricky to navigate smoothly; flat, greasy corners are unlocked by riders who can keep their weight over the bike to maximize grip from their tires. I threaded the needle between the trees, carefully picking lines and gently modulating the brakes to control speed and avoid unsettling the tires.

As gradients increase, the pace becomes steadily faster, and although these sections were once a flow trail, the years have been unkind. Decades of Scottish weather and millions of bike tires before me have unearthed plenty of rocks. The short rear end continues to be a valuable asset for the Dogma XC HT; with the rear wheel almost between your feet descending agility is enhanced. The more I committed the faster the Dogma XC HT got; floating through the trail, gapping over rough sections, popping onto high lines, and hunting out the smooth insides of corners.

The trail spits me out into the open, and I’m back on man-made singletrack; this time it’s the freshly manicured Masterplan trails. In stark contrast to the preceding trails, my brain needs to recalibrate for the higher speeds as I pump through rollers and swing around deep supportive berms.

It’s immediately obvious why both Pidcock and Ferrand-Prévot choose to line up on the hardtail for the Short Track event; not only does the stiff chassis aid acceleration but also allows you to drive the bike through supportive corners, generating speed.

This is a trail I have ridden a lot, but never this fast. It wasn’t on just this segment that I achieved a personal record; my day tearing around on the Dogma XC HT would yield a bumper harvest of PRs, even scooping up a couple of Strava segment cups along the way.

To finish the ride, I rode the section of trail where Ferrand-Prévot had made her race-winning move. After working through the pack to second position in the first two laps, Ferrand-Prévot attacked her French compatriot Loana Lecomte on a steep climbing section. It was a purposeful move, and as I rode the same section - which you can see in this feature's lead image - I could see why she chose that moment. The Dogma XC’s responsiveness makes it an explosive tool that could turn sharp power inputs into race-defining moves, especially in the hands of a rider like Ferrand-Prévot.

Unfazed and utterly composed on the pedals, Ferrand-Prévot demonstrated her dominance, opening up a gap which she would maintain for the rest of the race and crossing the line over a minute ahead of Lecomte to secure her ninth individual world title in mountain biking.

The perfect race needs the perfect bike, and after securing both XCC and XCO wins on its first outing, there is no doubt the Dogma XC HT has proven itself to be a formidable race bike worthy of the Dogma name.