Van Der Poel Is Back On The Dirt. Mountain Biking Should Refuse To Bow.

Mathieu van der Poel is on the Les Gets start list, and you can practically hear mountain biking’s marketing department choking on its espresso. The road superstar, cyclo-cross emperor and gravel world champion is due to line up at the Whoop UCI Mountain Bike World Series round in France from 20 to 23 August, his first mountain bike race of the 2026 season. Then, barely a week later, the circus moves to Val di Sole for the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships, with elite short track on 27 August and the men’s XCO title on 30 August.

That is not a build-up. That is a cameo with consequences. And yes, it will be magnificent to watch, because Van der Poel on a mountain bike is still one of cycling’s purest visual pleasures: elbows out, shoulders loose, power arriving in big, rude slabs. But let us not pretend this is some romantic return to roots. It is a superstar parachuting into a discipline that has been doing its hard, technical, poorly understood work while the road world was busy treating July like the only month with oxygen.

The missing jersey is not a side quest

Van der Poel has rainbow jerseys on the road, in cyclo-cross and on gravel. The mountain bike one is the gap in the trophy cabinet, the empty hook he clearly hates looking at. Good. Ambition should itch. But mountain biking is not a password-protected bonus level for road gods who have a spare fortnight after the Tour de France.

He has been here before. Last season he used Nové Mesto and Les Gets as his launch pad towards Worlds, finished sixth at Les Gets, then 29th at the World Championships. Back in 2018 he was a proper threat, getting onto the podium in a year when he actually put in real World Cup volume. In 2019 he won both short track and XCO at Val di Sole. There is history, yes. There is talent, obviously. There is also a calendar reality that cannot be bullied by palmarès.

The dirt does not care how famous you are on tarmac. It only asks whether you can hit the same greasy off-camber line at race speed after ninety minutes of being punched in the lungs.

That is where the problem starts. Cycling loves the crossover myth because it lets everyone feel clever. Road fans get to say their champions are universal athletes. Mountain bike fans get a bigger audience. Sponsors get a clean narrative: one rider, many bikes, infinite content. But somewhere in that transaction the actual specialists become furniture. The people who have been racing Mona Yongpyong, Nové Město, Leogang, Val di Sole lead-ups and every miserable training block between them are suddenly reduced to supporting cast in The Mathieu Show.

Pidcock is the comparison Van der Poel cannot escape

Tom Pidcock makes this even spicier. He is expected at the pointy end too, and unlike Van der Poel he has made modern XCO look like part of the job description rather than a nostalgic dare. Pidcock has Olympic gold, a 2024 mountain bike world title and a Nové Město win this season, reportedly his fifth win from five starts there. That is not dabbling. That is violence with scheduling discipline.

Van der Poel’s supporters will say he is different. They are right. He is a once-in-a-generation rider, maybe the best bike handler the road peloton has ever mass-produced by accident. Give him a kerb, a cambered corner, a cobbled gutter, a sandpit or a high-speed descent and he finds grip like a truffle pig finds lunch. But XCO at world level in 2026 is not just bike handling plus watts. It is start position, rhythm, equipment familiarity, feed timing, tyre judgement, suspension setup, line memory and the ability to keep making clean technical decisions while your heart rate is behaving like a toddler in a supermarket.

• If Van der Poel wins or podiums, mountain biking gets a global headline and a slightly embarrassing reminder that its biggest star might be a part-timer.
• If he gets mauled, the specialists get the respect they should already have had.
• If he crashes, everyone will suddenly rediscover how technical XCO is, as if the discipline has not been screaming that for years.
• If he starts well at Worlds, the race becomes must-watch television for every cyclist who pretends they only care about road season.

Mountain biking should enjoy the attention, then protect its pride

This is where MTB needs to grow a spine. Welcome Van der Poel, absolutely. Put him on the posters. Let the broadcasters salivate. He moves numbers, and cycling is not so wealthy that it can turn its nose up at attention. But do not bend the sporting narrative into a personality cult. Do not describe Les Gets as a rehearsal for one man’s destiny. Do not make Val di Sole sound like a redemption arc that happens to include the best mountain bikers on earth.

Because that is the old road-brain disease. The same disease that turns every cobbled Classic into a duel between two favourites while fifty other professionals are busy detonating the race. The same disease that treats gravel like retirement karaoke until a road name turns up. The same disease that assumes Australian fans need a Tour de France credential before they are allowed to care about any other bike race.

For Australian riders and fans, this matters. We are hosting Gravel Worlds in Nannup in October, we have Val di Sole on Stan, and we keep pretending cycling culture here is just a January crit, a Tour de France sleep-deprivation festival and a few blokes arguing over tyre pressure at the servo. It is bigger than that. Dirt disciplines are not novelty acts. They are where equipment, handling and athletic range are being stress-tested harder than most road races dare.

The verdict

I want Van der Poel at Les Gets. I want him at Val di Sole. I want him trying to wrestle the last major rainbow jersey out of a discipline that has resisted him longer than the road ever could. Cycling is better when its best riders make dangerous choices instead of hiding inside perfect preparation plans and sponsor-approved objectives.

But I also want mountain biking to stop acting grateful when the road aristocracy visits. Van der Poel is not saving XCO. He is borrowing its brutality to complete his own legend. That is fine. That is sport. Just do not confuse attention with validation. The validation is already there, in the rocks, roots, blown corners and specialists who know every inch of the battlefield before the celebrity guest has even clipped in.

If Van der Poel wins in Val di Sole, it will be outrageous and historic. If he gets dropped, it will be just as useful. Either way, mountain biking should take the spotlight, smile politely, then remind everyone that the dirt was never waiting for permission from the road.