Mathieu van der Poel may not have not raced a mountain bike all season, but it certainly didn't show as he made his comeback to the UCI Whoop Mountain Bike World Series in Les Gets.
For a start, Van der Poel took 10th place in short track, and while he may have described the opening race as "really painful" the effort helped set up the rider for a second-row start at Sunday's cross-country Olympic race. The Alpecin-Premier Tech rider capitalised on that position, and pushed hard through the first climb to put himself in contention early.
He then played his hand well as the race progressed, keeping his position among a leading group of five right through to the penultimate lap before then going to the front and putting pressure on his rivals. Then into the final lap of eight and it was Adrien Boichis (Specialized Factory Racing) who went on the charge, with Van der Poel the only rider who could get back on his wheel.
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All of a sudden it looked like the rider could be going from victory on the Champs-Elysées at the Tour de France to an XCO win at the Mountain Bike World Cup, after seven years absence from the top step in the event.
However, Boichis played to his advantage on the descents and managed to get a gap and hold it through to the line, with Van der Poel crossing seven seconds back to take second while Vidaurre Kossmann (Specialized Factory Racing) was a further 15 seconds behind Van der Poel in third.
"I think today was really nice to be in the front again," said Van der Poel in the broadcast post-race interview "It has been a while, but it makes a big difference to start on the first two rows and I was immediately in the first two groups and I enjoyed it. I missed a little bit of the last punch to win, but I'm happy with the performance."
Juggling road and MTB
Van der Poel's returns to mountain biking from the road have not always run smoothly, with two crashes in his Nové Mesto foray last year, but at Les Gets he didn't set a foot wrong despite the focus being necessarily on the Tour de France up until last month.
"After the Tour de France and the victory on the Champs-Élysées, I took a few days off to enjoy the moment. Then I resumed training and went to Livigno for an altitude camp, specifically to prepare for this mountain bike block," said Van der Poel earlier in the weekend. "I came out of the Tour in good shape and feel that I recovered well from it."
The results were a testament to this, with the second place being a step up from the sixth last year, though the key test is ahead with the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships this weekend.
"Trying to become world champion in this discipline one day is still a big goal. I have a few years and I want to take every opportunity I get," said the rider who has already swept up eight cyclo-cross world titles, plus a road and gravel one.
Still, even with the strong performance on Sunday, Van der Poel is taking nothing for granted when it comes to the rainbow jersey race in Val di Sole.
"It's nice, but last year I did a good performance here and the week after in Crans Montana I was not so good," said Van der Poel who came 29th in the XCO at Worlds last year. "So like I said, I think the starting position is quite important, and I will be again in the fifth row there, so I will need a bit of luck."
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