Andreas Seewald won the UCI XC Marathon World Championship in September on a prototype KTM with 32-inch wheels, the first world title ever taken on that size, according to Singletracks’ coverage of the Van Rysel launch. A few weeks later, on October 8 at the Roc d’Azur in Fréjus, Decathlon’s performance brand Van Rysel unveiled its first mountain bike, the RCR-XC, and it rolls on 32s too. What Van Rysel did not publish is a geometry chart. That gap is less of a mystery than it looks, because 32-inch mountain bike geometry is shaped by the wheel before any designer touches a pencil.
What Van Rysel actually confirmed
The confirmed list is short. The RCR-XC is a carbon full-suspension race bike with a 130mm fork. Rear travel has not been announced. Van Rysel says the size M frame is 230g lighter than the 29-inch Rockrider the Decathlon Ford team raced in 2026, and its wind tunnel numbers claim a 15.5 watt saving at 35 km/h over that bike, per BikeRadar’s launch report. BikeRadar also notes the development started from race data collected since the Paris 2024 Olympics, and that the bike will be refined through the 2027 World Cup before anyone can buy one.
Luca Martin, who won both the 2026 XCO and XCC World Cup overalls, will ride it in 2027 alongside Samara Maxwell and Savilia Blunk. Van Rysel MTB product manager Luis Moro told Singletracks that the bike “is designed to win the biggest races.”
On geometry, Pinkbike’s first look reported that Moro could not discuss the numbers yet because the athletes are still testing them, and that reach and chainstay length are not final. So any chart you see for this bike before 2027 is a guess.
The one geometry decision that is visible is the cockpit. Instead of a stem with a steep negative rise, Van Rysel built the drop into a one-piece bar and stem. Velomotion describes it as a unit that lowers the hand position to a level similar to a 29-inch bike, and Gear and Grit notes the press release compares its shape to water buffalo horns. That bar is the tell. You do not design a cockpit to pull the hands down unless the frame’s front end sits high.
Why 32-inch mountain bike geometry starts tall
A bigger wheel lifts the axles. To keep the bottom bracket at a sane height, the designer has to drop it further below the axles, and the fork needs more axle-to-crown length to clear a taller tire. The Radavist’s breakdown of 32er wheels puts numbers on it: roughly 30mm of extra BB drop plus about 40mm of extra fork length, which adds up to around 70mm more stack than an equivalent 29er.
Their conclusion is blunt. The minimum viable stack for a 32er with 100mm of travel is about 650mm, and around 615mm for a rigid bike. For comparison, the 2027 Scott Spark RC in size large, a 120mm World Cup bike, has 597mm of stack.
The rear of the bike grows as well. The Radavist found the shortest practical chainstay on their 32-inch hardtail was 445 to 450mm, and some full-suspension prototypes have needed about 470mm to clear the tire through the travel.
Two charts that already exist
Production 32ers with full charts are rare, but two are worth reading closely. The Actofive I-Train 32 is a CNC-machined 130mm trail bike from Dresden, and the Neuhaus Nova32 is a rigid steel hardtail that went on sale in March 2026. Here they are against the 29-inch Spark RC, which is the closest thing to what the RCR-XC will race against.
| Size L or equivalent | Scott Spark RC 2027 (29″) | Actofive I-Train 32 (S3) | Neuhaus Nova32 (L) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Travel (F/R) | 120 / 120mm | 130 / 130mm | Rigid |
| Reach | 480mm | 495mm | 475mm |
| Stack | 597mm | 694.5mm | 642mm |
| Head angle | 65.4 to 66.4° | 65° | 67° |
| Chainstay | 434mm | 458.5mm | 450 to 460mm (2.4″ tire) |
| BB drop | 45mm | 77.5mm | 95mm |
| Fork axle-to-crown | n/a | 573mm | 490mm |
Read the stack row first. The Actofive carries 97.5mm more stack than the Spark RC. About 10mm of travel and a trail bike brief explain part of that gap, but the BB drop difference (77.5mm against 45mm, so 32.5mm) lines up almost exactly with The Radavist’s 30mm estimate. The wheel is doing most of the work.
The chainstay row tells the second story. The Actofive’s 458.5mm rear centre is 24.5mm longer than the Spark’s. Actofive’s figure for a mullet build, with a 29-inch rear wheel, drops to 443.5mm according to Brujula, which shows how much of that length is purely tire clearance.
Then look at the head angle. The Nova32 runs 67°, steeper than most modern XC bikes. A taller wheel adds trail at any given head angle and fork offset, so a 32er can hold a steadier front end without going as slack. Expect 32-inch race bikes to land a little steeper than their 29-inch siblings rather than slacker.
A forecast for the RCR-XC chart
Taking what Van Rysel confirmed and what the wheels demand, here is what I expect when the numbers land:
- Stack well above 29er norms. A 130mm fork on a 32-inch wheel almost certainly puts the frame past The Radavist’s 650mm floor in mid sizes. The integrated drop bar exists to claw that back for racers who want a low, aggressive position.
- Chainstays in the mid 440s or longer. Pinkbike’s report that the length is still open suggests the team is testing how short the flex stays can go while clearing a 2.25 inch Vittoria Peyote.
- A head angle around 66 to 67°. The extra trail from the bigger wheel gives Van Rysel room to steepen slightly for quick handling in tight World Cup corners.
- A long wheelbase, mostly at the rear. Longer chainstays plus a long front centre will push the wheelbase past what an XC racer is used to. On fast courses that is stability. On switchbacks it is extra work.
The sizing problem nobody has solved
Stack is where 32-inch wheels split riders by height. A small 29er XC frame like the Spark RC S has 591mm of stack. If The Radavist’s 615mm rigid floor holds, no 32-inch suspension bike can get a small frame anywhere near that without extreme bar tricks. Look at the Nova32’s size run: it starts at ML. There is no small.
That is why the RCR-XC’s cockpit matters beyond aerodynamics. If Van Rysel wants Maxwell and Blunk on 32s as well as Martin, the bar has to do the job that a lower head tube can’t.
At 6’4″, I sit at the other end of this argument. My XL 29ers usually wear a stack of spacers and a riser bar to get the front end up where my back likes it. The Nova32’s XL has 660mm of stack with a 490mm reach, numbers that would let a tall rider run a flat bar and no spacers. The long chainstays also help here, because a tall rider’s weight sits further back over a short rear centre. For riders over about six feet, the 32-inch geometry penalty looks a lot like a correction.
If you want to see how these numbers translate to your own fit, run them through the bike geometry calculator, and use our guide on how to read a geometry chart to compare stack and reach across wheel sizes. For context on where XC geometry sat before the wheel size jump, the Scott Spark DC 2027 and our 2026 geometry trends roundup are the baseline.
Van Rysel’s chart will arrive sometime during the 2027 season. When it does, check the stack and chainstay rows first. Those two numbers will tell you whether the RCR-XC is a race bike that happens to have big wheels, or a bike whose shape the wheels decided.