Charlie's Profile

In his first full year of elite level competition, Scottish mountain bike specialist Charlie Aldridge is chasing Olympic glory.

Aldridge was already proving himself from a young age, joining his local mountain bike club and coming third in a Scottish series event at the age of just 10 years old. He shone at junior level, offering the suggestion of his future potential with several wins at UCI World Cups in his junior career, topped off with a junior world title in 2019, in Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada.

Aldridge combined cycling with university over the next two years, as he studied a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Edinburgh. While mountain bike has clearly always been his main focus, Aldridge is versatile and has also demonstrated prowess on the roads, finishing 14th in the BUCS University road race in 2022, for which he was rewarded with selection to the Scottish squad for the Commonwealth Games mountain bike cross-country event in Birmingham in 2022, at the age of just 21. He finished 16th in the Men's Mountain Bike Cross-Country final having been looking on course for bronze before he came off on a corner on the small, grassy finish circuit, ripping his rear derailleur clean off his bike. Later that year, Aldridge came second in the Scottish National Hill Climbing Championships, underscoring his superior ascending abilities. 

2023 was a breakthrough year for Aldridge, as he posted a series of excellent results in world cup events riding up at elite level in his final year as an wnder-23. The pinnacle of his season came at a home world championships in Glasgow, as Aldridge rode from the front to take gold in the under-23 cross-country event, winning an historic rainbow jersey on home soil and putting himself into the frame for Olympic selection, as well as attracting the attention of the Cannondale Factory Racing team, who signed Aldridge for the 2024 season.

He carried his momentum through into the rest of the season, finishing fifth in the short-track world cup event in Snowshoe, USA, and recording his best ever weekend at an elite world cup in Mont-Sainte-Anne, where he finished eighth in the short-track and seventh in the cross-country event.

So far in 2024, Aldridge has shown his strength in the early rounds of the UCI Mountain Bike World Series, riding aggressively and achieving some strong results, including two top 10s at the European MTB Championships in Cheile Grădiștei, Romania, and fourth place in the cross-country in Nové Mesto, Czech Republic. His form continues to improve heading towards the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, where he will hope to make his debut.

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