Van der Poel will start from the last row at the MTB World Championships in a desperate attempt for an Olympic qualifying spot

We already knew that Mathieu van der Poel will be in the next XCO World Championships in Glasgow and that he will do it only 6 days after racing in the Road World Championships, but now the coach of the Netherlands has confirmed it and has explained what are his chances to be in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Van der Poel will try to secure an Olympic qualification at the MTB World Championships 2023

Dutch rider Mathieu van der Poel has always confessed that winning the gold medal at the Olympic Games in MTB was one of the great goals of his career, but the truth is that things have been very complicated for him since he suffered one of the most memorable crashes in this sport in Tokyo 2020.

That crash triggered back problems for Van der Poel that, after forcing him to stop, caused him to focus on road and cyclocross to continue competing at a high level. That deprived us of Dutch talent on the mountain bike, but it has also left the Netherlands with virtually no chance of an Olympic place in the sport for Paris 2024.

The options to get it are less and less and the last one is to be among the best qualified countries in the XCO World Championships to be held in Glasgow on August 12th. The Dutch coach has already confirmed that Van der Poel will be there.

He has not raced MTB since July 2021

To try to achieve an Olympic place, the Netherlands team will go to the MTB World Championships 2023 with a strong pair formed by Mathieu van der Poel and Milan Vader, but the problem is that Van der Poel will arrive in Glasgow after more than 2 years without racing in mountain biking, which has left him without UCI points and will make him start from the last places.

In the past Van der Poel has shown that he has plenty of talent to face this kind of challenges, but in less than a month we will be able to see if he is able to overcome so many adversities this time.