Take2 weeks ago
Van der Poel confirmed he's skipping the XCC at UCI Mountain Bike World Championships 2026 Val di Sole — not because the legs aren't there, but because the math isn't. At Worlds, XCC results don't reshuffle the XCO grid, so he'd start fifth row regardless.
At UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Les Gets 2026, a tenth-place XCC finish moved him to the second row for Sunday's XCO — exactly the rule working as intended. Val di Sole runs differently: the first four rows are reserved for the top 32 in the UCI MTB Ranking, and row five is where road and cyclo-cross specialists land. A win in Thursday's Short Track would change nothing. «The rules are different there, so I'll have to start the XCO from the fifth row anyway. That obviously won't make it any easier,» van der Poel said after Les Gets. Tom Pidcock is making the same call — XCC skipped, everything saved for Sunday.
Sources
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