“It's like a snake in front of us”: Sammie Maxwell speaks out for the first time about the issue that kept her out of the World Cup

The decision of Sammie Maxwell to step away from competition after winning the overall World Cup XCO 2025 was one of the big surprises of last winter. At that time, there was talk of the need to rest, recharge, and spend more time with her family after a particularly demanding season. Now, coinciding with her return to the World Cup in Les Gets, the New Zealander has decided to publicly share that she needed to address an eating disorder she has been living with for years.

Sammie Maxwell speaks openly about the eating disorder that led her to step away from the World Cup

Maxwell was at the peak of her sporting career when she decided to stop. After conquering the overall World Cup XCO 2025, earlier this year she announced that she would take a long break and step away from international competition.

Her public explanation at the time focused mainly on the enormous physical and mental strain of the season and her desire to return to New Zealand, be with her family, and regain balance. But there was a much deeper issue that Maxwell has preferred to explain now.

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The Decathlon Ford rider has been struggling with an eating disorder since she was 15 years old and during this time away from racing, she was able to confront the problem in a different way.

"A lot of people don't understand eating disorders, because, you know, how could someone not wanna eat food? And it's not just about wanting to be skinny, it's a psychological response when we see food. It's like a snake in front of us", explains Maxwell in the video published alongside the World Cup.

The New Zealander asserts that for a long time she had received psychological help, but not the treatment she needed to understand and modify that fear response associated with food.

"For so long I never received the treatment that I needed to rewire this fear response", she acknowledges.

Maxwell uses a very graphic image to describe how she has lived with the problem. She imagines her disorder as a kind of small "gremlin," similar to Gollum, that appears precisely when she has food in front of her. No matter how much she rationally wants to act differently, she explains, fear ultimately takes over and blocks her.

Understanding where that reaction came from and learning to identify it has been one of the keys of these last few months.

Stepping away from cycling without setting a date to return

A fundamental part of the process was precisely not turning the break into another phase of preparation to return to competition.

When she announced her temporary retirement, Maxwell did not know when she would return. And now she acknowledges that she needed it to be that way.

"I think for me it was really important when I walked away to fully be like, "I don't know when I'm going to come back." And there was no timeline on it, because if I did it with an expectation of coming back to racing, I don't think I would've been able to actually explore what it looked like without cycling."

Her absence, therefore, was not simply an extraordinarily long preseason. For several months, she stopped placing races as the goal around which to organize her recovery.

The process was far from simple.

"I think this has been the hardest eight months of my life, but it was also really rewarding", she asserts.

Maxwell even compares that evolution to a particularly tough training session: the greater the difficulty, the greater the satisfaction afterward of seeing her progress.

She finally received the green light from her professional and medical environment to return. The possibility of doing so only during the last part of the calendar also offered a different scenario than facing a full season: competing, discovering what difficulties reappear in that environment, and putting into practice everything learned during these months.

"I feel like I've unlocked the secret key of just fueling my body"

The change does not seem to have been limited to the psychological aspect. Maxwell asserts that she is also perceiving significant consequences in her performance.

The World Cup champion recalls that by the end of 2025, her body was seriously showing signs of wear. Now the feeling is practically the opposite.

"Last year, towards the end of the year, my body was falling apart a bit, so it's so nice to show up to the end of the season and really feel strong. And I actually am fitter than I was last year".

That does not mean she expects to return immediately to the competitive level with which she finished 2025. After so many months without racing, Maxwell acknowledges that she still needs to regain automatism and get used to an intensity that is difficult to reproduce in training.

But her physical data is giving her reasons to be optimistic. As she explains, in the warm-ups before races, she is recording power figures around 10% higher.

"I feel like I've unlocked the secret key of just fueling my body and focusing a lot on strength and power and sustainability".

And her return has already offered some interesting signs. 

In the Short Track of Les Gets, she suffered a fall during the start and later a flat tire after she had already completed a great comeback to the front group. Before the breakdown, she had shown that the pace is still there, reaching back to the best after the initial incident. Ultimately, the victory went to Sina Frei after an attack on the last lap. 

Beyond the result, Maxwell seems to be approaching this second stage of her career with a different perspective. She no longer sets immediate deadlines to reach her maximum level and accepts that the process may be long.

"I feel like I can keep progressing, and if that takes a few years, that's cool. But I feel like I am really on track to having the resources I need to be the best that I can be".

 

 

 

 

 

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After conquering a World Cup at just 23 years old, Maxwell has returned to competition still being one of the great references of international XCO. But her words make it clear that the main goal of these eight months was not to return to winning races, but to find a more sustainable way to continue competing at the highest level.