“A mountain bike course doesn’t lie”: Van der Poel has no explanation for what happened today

Mathieu van der Poel arrived at the XCO World Championship in Val di Sole with many more options than he wanted to concede to himself before the start. His second place a week earlier in Les Gets invited optimism, but the Dutchman ended up completely out of the medal fight and crossed the finish line in 30th position, almost five minutes behind Tom Pidcock. A performance for which, for now, he also finds no explanation.

Van der Poel finds no explanation for his poor XCO World Championship

In the days leading up to the World Championship, Van der Poel had repeatedly pointed out his starting position as one of the major obstacles he would have to overcome in Val di Sole. After competing very little in MTB and arriving without enough UCI points, he had to start from the fifth row, a particularly complicated situation on a circuit where losing time trapped among riders could force him to make a huge initial effort. But ultimately that was not the problem.

Van der Poel and Tom Pidcock started from a very similar area of the grid and both managed to advance without major incidents during the first minutes. At the start of the first lap, they were around 30th position and still just 16 seconds from the lead.

From there, their races took completely different paths. Pidcock began a spectacular comeback that gradually took him to the front group before attacking, eliminating his main rivals one by one and ultimately being crowned World Champion.

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Van der Poel, on the other hand, soon stopped progressing.

"Today I had no power in my legs. It just wasn't going well at all", he admitted after the race in statements collected by NU.nl. "Last week and this week I felt good training, but a mountain bike circuit doesn't lie."

The Dutchman also explained that the bad feelings appeared practically from the start, long before the race entered its decisive phase.

"I realized quite early that I had bad legs. That's why this result is also unexpected for me. It's the same story as last year. The race before the World Championship was good and at the World Championship itself, I was bad. Right now I have no explanation."

And precisely there lies one of the biggest mysteries left by his passage through Val di Sole.

From flirting with victory in Les Gets to finishing 30th in the World Championship

Just seven days earlier, Van der Poel had been able to compete head-to-head with the best XCO specialists at the World Cup in Les Gets.

After almost a year without racing a mountain bike event, he finished tenth in the Short Track and later was second in the XCO, just seven seconds behind Adrien Boichis. A result that immediately placed him among the top favorites for Val di Sole.

Van der Poel himself had tried to lower expectations by arguing that at the World Championship he would have to start much further back. But once the race was run, it became clear that his problem was not so much in the starting position as in a day when he simply did not have the legs he expected.

Pidcock is the best reference to verify this. The Brit also had to make his way from behind and, despite arriving at the World Championship after a very demanding Tour de France and even suffering a fall during the previous training, he ended up completing the comeback and winning his second XCO rainbow jersey. After the race, he acknowledged how complicated his preparation had been and announced that in 2027 he would practically step away from MTB.

Van der Poel never found himself in a similar situation. During the first lap, he already began to lose ground to Pidcock and subsequently lost positions until finishing 30th.

"It's true that those bad results are starting to accumulate a bit", the Dutchman admitted while analyzing his recent trajectory in mountain biking. "But last year I did feel like I was arriving at the World Championship not at a hundred percent. This time I expected much more." "I can't change it now. Unfortunately, there are also days like this."

Now the Dutchman will completely change the scene. He leaves MTB behind and will return to the road with another World Championship on the horizon. In four weeks, the road World Championship in Montreal is scheduled, where he will seek to reclaim the rainbow jersey he already won in Glasgow 2023.