The Steve Tilford Foundation Team (STF) is stepping into its next chapter. Even as the off-road landscape shifts and the cyclocross scene contracts, they persevere. Gravel is booming, XC racing surging, and industry budgets tightening, but the team hasn’t drifted from who it is at the core. It still lives and breathes cyclocross. It continues to nurture riders who love the sport. And now, it’s doubling down on something that’s been baked into its DNA since day one: mentorship.
Since it’s the crescendo of US cyclocross with Nationals (#CXNATS) in full action, we thought there was no better time to catch up with Raylyn Nuss and meet the new crew at STF.
What’s New? Full Female Roster, a Bigger Mission
Elite racer Raylyn Nuss has been at the helm since the inception of the team. Making the deals, schedules, marketing, pretty much everything – oh, and racing full-time.
The Tilford team keeps the roster to three riders—lean, intentional, and now wholly focused on development. It’s quality over quantity, with the kind of hands-on support you rarely see outside a national program.
New partnerships coming online for 2026 only sharpen the vision. Pinarello joined as a major supporter in 2025, supplying cyclocross, gravel (read our review here), and, importantly, XC bikes that will enable the team to compete more deeply in the World Cup scene. Core sponsors such as Pas Normal Studios, SRAM/Zipp/Time, Challenge Tires, and Giro remain committed. It’s a tight, refined ecosystem, one that’s becoming more common these days. Small enough to control the message, care for riders beyond the bike, and strong enough to push riders to the highest level.
Mentorship Becomes the Team Identity
Raylyn describes this next phase less like a race team and more like an incubator. It’s a place where riders learn how to be athletes, not just racers. This is the first year the team is exclusively women. Offering a place where young women can grow without the pressure-cooker dynamics that push so many out of the sport.
Nuss explained, “Mentorship happens everywhere: on the ride, between intervals, over meals, and in the messy moments between big races.”
But it’s not just Nuss doing the mentoring. Makena, heading into her final U23 year, has naturally become a mentor to first-year U23 racer Nico. It sounds like the classic “big sister” setup. The culture works because it’s built around giving ambitious young riders a safe space to grow—not drown.
Makena Kellerman Raises the Bar
If there’s a headline moment right now in this new chapter, it’s Makena Kellerman. She enters her final U23 season with a résumé that already reads like a veteran’s. She’s raced nearly the entire XCO World Cup circuit and has had a rapid rise in American cyclocross.
If you rewind her 2024–25 campaign, you saw her bounce from Brazil to Europe to North America on the XCO World Cup side, then transition to cyclocross, where she found herself on the podium immediately. All this without doing much cyclocross-specific training. But what’s next?
For 2026, Kellerman is going all-in on the World Cup XCO circuit. With roughly 10 events from May to October, the goal is ambitious yet realistic. Kellerman’s goal is for consistent top-five finishes and podiums in the U23 World Cups. That’s terrain the Tilford team hasn’t operated in before; it’s world-class, and Makena’s presence alone nudges the whole program upward.
Are the 2028 LA Olympics in the future? Yes – it’s a long-term goal (and a stretch), but there’s still time to get there. Kellerman was quick to mention “America’s women’s MTB field is super deep with talent, with more coming up every year.” Maken could be one of those in the mix. So could Nico, under the Candian federation.
Nico Knoll: The Quiet Accelerator
While the spotlight often falls on Makena and Nuss, Nico Knoll is the complementary piece that makes this development model actually work. As a first-year U23 Canadian rider, Knoll brings a level of “send-it” style and creativity that seems to elevate everyone around her.
Knoll is heading into a European cyclocross block starting in mid-December. A full European cyclocross campaign is an experience very few riders her age get, and fewer survive with confidence intact. She’s an example of why the team’s small-roster, mentorship-first approach makes sense: young riders need opportunities and structure, not chaos.
Together, Nico and Makena represent a critical piece for the future of North American off-road racing.
What’s Next?
This next phase of the Steve Tilford Foundation Team feels less like a pivot and more like a sharpening of purpose. Create a clear pathway from juniors to U23 to elite, filling the gaps that drive so many talented young riders out of the sport. Now, with Pinarello onboard and two U23 athletes ready for the big stage, the team becomes part of the global XC conversation.
There are fewer and fewer development opportunities for riders in the US. The Steve Tilford Foundation is doing the good work. It’s a modern interpretation of what Steve Tilford believed in: racing hard, lifting others up, and leaving the sport better than you found it.
Read more about the Steve Tilford Foundation here.
