After walking away from the final day of racing at the Tour de France with another stage victory, Mathieu van der Poel has turned his attention to mountain biking, with it now confirmed that the Alpecin-Premier Tech rider has signed up for the Les Gets round of the Whoop UCI Mountain Bike World Series .
Van der Poel hasn't raced the off-road discipline since last season, where he lined up at May's Nové Mesto before taking on Les Gets as a lead in race to the World Championships, where he came 29th.
There had been an expectation that his World Series racing would once again begin in Nové Mesto this year, but that was a plan that didn't come to fruition. Now, however, both the race series and his team have confirmed with social media announcements that he is planning to head to the August 21-23 round, where he finished sixth last year.
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The Les Gets entry to the fray leaves just a week between Van der Poel's return to racing in the discipline for the season and the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Italy. The elite short-track races (XCC) are to be held on Thursday August 27 and the Cross-Country Olympic (XCO) on Sunday August 30 in Val di Sole.
Van der Poel has won world titles on the road, gravel and in cyclo-cross but the mountain bike rainbow jersey has proven elusive, although he did make it onto the podium in 2018, a year that also included numerous World Cup rounds.
The talented multi-discipline rider has significantly ramped up his race days on the road since then and has faced some challenges while sporadically dipping into mountain bike racing. There have been successes – such as the 2021 Albstadt and Nové Mesto short track wins and also second in the XCO at the Czech round – but there have also been DNF's and crashes with a crash taking him out of the Tokyo Olympics and also two in his Nové Mesto foray last year.
The reigning cyclo-cross world champion, who has already picked up six WorldTour wins on the road this year, has long made it clear that chasing that missing title remains a priority, even if a fast-tracked preparation following the Tour de France isn't ideal. In fact just this week Van der Poel has been putting out posts on social media from the Val di Sole area, where this year's rainbow jersey battle is set to unfold. It is a location where he has tasted victory before, winning both the XCC and XCO at the 2019 World Cup round there.
This time, however, Van der Poel is no longer a mountain bike regular and on top of facing rivals that have been on the start line from the start of the 2026 series in May at Mona Yongpyong, there is also another of his Tour de France rivals expected to be on the start line this year, Tom Pidcock. The British rider claimed both Olympic gold and the mountain bike world title in 2024 and also managed to squeeze in the Nové Mesto round this year, where he took his fifth win in as many starts.
