Mathieu van der Poel fades in mountain bike World Championships as Alan Hatherly retains men’s XCO title
South African dominates men’s race as Van der Poel powers from 33rd to 2nd in opening laps before slipping back.
Mathieu van der Poel’s quest to complete his set of world titles will rumble on after he finished way off the pace set by winner Alan Hatherly at the men’s elite XCO World Championships race in Crans-Montana, Switzerland.
South African Hatherly, who also rides on the road for Jayco-AlUla, crushed his opposition in the 9-lap event, successfully defending the title he won 12 months earlier in Andorra.
He attacked in the early laps and built up a lead over 90 seconds, eventually winning by just under a minute to Italian Simone Avondetto, with France’s Olympic silver medallist Viktor Koretzky a few seconds further behind in third.
Van der Poel started the race in 33rd place on the grid due to his deficit in UCI World Cup points. He powered through the first two laps, bursting through the field to move up to second place, with Hatherly already up the trail and never to be seen again.
The former road and cyclocross world champion felt the effect of his efforts and drifted back through the field to eventually finish in 29th place, 5:35 down on Hatherly.
The undisputed GOAT of the discipline, Nino Schurter, finished down in 42nd place in his final Worlds before retirement.
A day earlier, Sweden’s Jenny Rissveds continued her run of form to claim the women’s world title for the first time ahead of Samara Maxwell and Alessandra Keller.
Hatherly won the title for the second year running.
Hatherly was delighted with his performance and was even somewhat surprised that he was able to dominate the race in the way that he did. He added that his long solo effort off the front was pre-planned.
“I think I just had one of those days. I think it would be hard for me to repeat a performance like that,” Hatherly said in the TV interview after the race.
“I think all the stars aligned. Before the race I said there was going to be a time trial and it would be a less tactical race. I guess I did that from the beginning, just taking it straight on and just time trialling my way all the way through. Two or three laps ago, I really started to feel the effort of going really early, but I managed to consolidate.”
Hatherly has been racing on the road for much of the season after signing for Jayco-AlUla at the start of this year. Juggling between the slick and knobbly tyres has been a challenge.
“To be honest, it’s been really tough to combine both, but defending this world title was a big goal from the beginning of the season. It was really difficult to balance the two. The last month I just went full mountain bike focus and did all my training on the mountain bike.”
Van der Poel’s short 2025 mountain bike campaign started off promisingly in Les Gets two weeks prior to the Worlds, when he finished 6th in the World Cup race to raise his hopes for the World Championships.
The Alpecin-Deceuninck rider won the road race world title in Glasgow in 2023 and has claimed the rainbow bands no fewer than seven times. Having achieved so much during his career, the XCO world title is one goal that has eluded him so far and he had made this race one of his main goals of the season.
“The world title in mountain biking remains my dream, and I still have a few years to go. We’ll keep trying,” Van der Poel told NOS afterwards.
The 30-year-old confirmed that he has now ended his 2025 season.
“I need to rest. The bike’s going to be put aside for a bit,” he said.
“The start was a dream scenario, but after that it was a long race mentally,” he went on in review of his race. “But mountain biking is the only discipline in which it’s still fun just to ride around. My legs were really bad, but I tried to enjoy it a bit. I never even thought about quitting. I was here anyway. Quitting doesn’t change anything.”
