It is official: Mathieu van der Poel will race in the XCO World Cup in Les Gets

Mathieu van der Poel's participation in the XCO World Cup in Les Gets was practically an open secret, but the final step was still missing. The organization of the WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series has just confirmed the Dutchman on the entry list for the Haute-Savoie event, which takes place from August 20 to 23. Van der Poel thus officially returns to mountain biking almost a year after his last race in the discipline.

Mathieu van der Poel confirms his return to XCO in Les Gets

In recent days, everything pointed to Mathieu van der Poel being in Les Gets. The Alpecin-Premier Tech rider has been specifically preparing for his return to mountain biking since he finished the Tour, and his presence could practically be taken for granted, but there was still no official confirmation.

Now there is. The World Cup organization has announced his participation, and Van der Poel is confirmed for the French event, which will be his first mountain bike competition of the entire 2026 season.

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The big goal will come shortly after with the XCO World Championship in Val di Sole, from August 25 to 30, where Van der Poel will again try to achieve one of the few major titles still missing from his extraordinary multidisciplinary palmarès.

The organization itself presents the Les Gets World Cup as an opportunity for the Dutchman to measure himself directly against the best XCO specialists and finalize his preparation before the World Championship.

His return comes after another successful road campaign and a 2026 Tour de France in which he achieved two stage victories, including the final stage in Paris after launching an attack alongside Tadej Pogacar.

He repeats the same formula he used in 2025

The calendar chosen by Van der Poel bears many similarities to the one he followed exactly a year ago. Back then, he also used the Haute-Savoie World Cup as a last major test before facing the World Championship.

In 2025, he returned to XCO in Les Gets on August 31 and did so with a performance that significantly raised expectations. Despite starting very far back, he recovered positions to finish sixth and even recorded the fastest lap of the race. 

That result seemed to confirm that he could arrive at the Crans-Montana World Championship with real chances of competing at the front. However, two weeks later, the race for the rainbow took a very different turn.

Van der Poel managed to position himself among the leaders after climbing from a delayed position on the grid, but he lost ground later and ended up in 29th place, more than five minutes behind the winner Alan Hatherly.

That race on September 14, 2025, was, in fact, his last official mountain bike competition. Therefore, when he lines up this weekend in Les Gets, it will have been almost eleven months since we last saw Van der Poel compete on a MTB.