South Africa’s Alan Hatherly reigns supreme at 2025 Mountain Bike World Championships

Olympic bronze medallist Alan Hatherly found top gear once again to successfully defended his title in the elite men’s cross-country race at the 2025 UCI Mountain Bike World Championship in Switzerland.

Hatherly took advantage of a mistake from early leader Victor Koretzky of France  to go clear on the second of nine laps of the Crans Montana circuit, extending his lead to a full minute by the halfway mark.

The chasing pack had no answer to the relentless South African even when fatigue set in late in the race, to take the title. Hatherly ground the competition into the dirt,

“I just had one of those days. It’ll be hard for me to repeat a performance like that. All the stars aligned,” Hatherly said.

Italy’s Simone Avondetto was nearly a minute behind in second, with Koretzky taking the final spot on the podium.

“Before the race I said it was going to be a time trial and a less tactical race and I guess I did that from the beginning, taking it straight on and just TT-ing (time-trialing) it all the way through. With two or three laps to go I started to feel the effort of going so early but the gap was so big I could just consolidate and see it through,” Hatherly said.

The 29-year-old is in a rich vein of form, adding the 2025 world championship to Olympic XCO bronze in Paris last year. He made history by becoming SA’s first Olympic mountain bike medallists as well as the first African and non-European man to win a medal in the Olympic XCO event. The breakthrough came in Hatherly’s third Olympics, after taking part in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.

He also finished the 2024 season as the overall UCI XCO World Cup Series winner, and won’t be unseated easily. The cycling star’s form bodes well for LA 2028 for South Africa.