Mountain Biking: A Scoping Review of the Scientific Literature Across Performance, Injury, and Applied Domains

Mountain biking (MTB) is practiced recreationally and competitively in several disciplines, but its scientific literature is dispersed across fields. This scoping review mapped this literature by thematic domain, study design, and study population. PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, and SciELO were searched from inception without language restrictions (last search October 2026). Of 1845 screened records, 609 studies were included and assigned to one of eight domains. The largest domains were Injury/Epidemiology (150; 24.6%), Physiology/Performance (147; 24.1%), and Equipment/Technology (142; 23.3%); the smallest was Gender/Participation (24; 3.9%). Most studies were observational (51.6%) or methodological/engineering (21.3%), and 15.3% were interventional. Endurance-oriented disciplines were addressed in 22.3% of studies and gravity-oriented disciplines in 9.4%. Among 472 studies with human participants, sex was not reported in 55.3%, and only 8 were restricted to women. Cross-country racing was consistently described as high-intensity intermittent exercise, and injuries were mainly acute and crash-related. Future research should use standardized injury surveillance and controlled intervention studies, report participant sex, and include gravity disciplines and female, youth, and masters riders.