Mathieu van der Poel’s quest to complete his set of world titles will rumble on after he finished way off the pace set by winner Alan Hatherly at the men’s elite XCO World Championships race in Crans-Montana, Switzerland.
South African Hatherly, who also rides on the road for Jayco-AlUla, crushed his opposition in the 9-lap event, successfully defending the title he won 12 months earlier in Andorra.
He attacked in the early laps and built up a lead over 90 seconds, eventually winning by just under a minute to Italian Simone Avondetto, with France’s Olympic silver medallist Viktor Koretzky a few seconds further behind in third.
A day earlier, Sweden’s Jenny Rissveds continued her run of form to claim the women’s world title for the first time ahead of Samara Maxwell and Alessandra Keller.
Hatherly won the title for the second year running
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Hatherly was delighted with his performance and was even somewhat surprised that he was able to dominate the race in the way that he did. He added that his long solo effort off the front was pre-planned.
“I think I just had one of those days. I think it would be hard for me to repeat a performance like that,” Hatherly said in the TV interview after the race.
“I think all the stars aligned. Before the race I said there was going to be a time trial and it would be a less tactical race. I guess I did that from the beginning, just taking it straight on and just time trialling my way all the way through. Two or three laps ago, I really started to feel the effort of going really early, but I managed to consolidate.”
Hatherly has been racing on the road for much of the season after signing for Jayco-AlUla at the start of this year. Juggling between the slick and knobbly tyres has been a challenge.
“To be honest, it’s been really tough to combine both, but defending this world title was a big goal from the beginning of the season. It was really difficult to balance the two. The last month I just went full mountain bike focus and did all my training on the mountain bike.”
Van der Poel’s short 2025 mountain bike campaign started off promisingly in Les Gets two weeks prior to the Worlds, when he finished 6th in the World Cup race to raise his hopes for the World Championships.
The Alpecin-Deceuninck rider won the road race world title in Glasgow in 2023 and has claimed the rainbow bands no fewer than seven times. Having achieved so much during his career, the XCO world title is one goal that has eluded him so far and he had made this race one of his main goals of the season.
“I’ve been trying for a few years. But I don’t see this as my last chance,” he said on his team’s social media ahead of the race. “There are many more years ahead of me where I can go for it. But of course, it would be fantastic to become world champion now in one of the disciplines I love most.”
