Alan Hatherly (South Africa) defended his rainbow jersey on Sunday with a dominant display in the elite men’s Cross-Country race at the 2025 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Switzerland.
Riding with the No.1 dossard on his back, Hatherly took advantage of a mistake from early frontrunner Victor Koretzky (France) to go clear on the second of nine laps of the Crans Montana circuit, and he was never seen again.
After fending off a spirited early chase from three-time runner-up Mathias Flückiger, Hatherly ground the competition into the dirt, extending his lead to a full minute by the half-way mark. In fact, by the end of that fifth lap, the emergent five-man chase group were soft-pedalling down the home straight, 1:21 down and seemingly resigned to racing for silver.
As such, the last half of the race was something of a procession for Hatherly. He did make a mistake with a slip on the very rooted section where Koretzky had made that crucial early error – and where countless riders including Van der Poel came unstuck. And his lap times, so consistently fast for so long, did finally start to dip at the end, just as the battle ignited and sped up behind.
Flückiger was caught on lap 5 by Koretzky, his fellow Swiss Luca Schatti, and the Italian…
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