Reigning UCI Cross-country Olympic (XCO) World Champion to compete in penultimate European round of 2025 WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series
Puck Pieterse (Alpecin-Deceuninck) has confirmed that she will be competing at the next UCI Cross-country World Cup in Les Gets, Haute-Savoie (France) later this month.
The 23-year-old has been a dominant force in the 2025 WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series since her first off-road race of the season at round three in Nové Město Na Moravě (Czechia), winning five out of the eight races that she’s entered.
In that time, she has secured a UCI Cross-country Short Track (XCC) win in Nové Město Na Moravě, and two XCO-XCC doubles in Saalfelden Leogang – Salzburgerland (Austria) and Val di Sole - Trentino (Italy). She didn’t manage to repeat that feat in her most recent performances in Pal Arinsal (Andorra) but still secured fourth and 10th in the XCC and XCO, respectively.
The multi-discipline rider switched her attention to the road in July, where she led Women’s WorldTour team Fenix-Alpecin at her second Le Tour de France Femmes. She had a strong race and was in the top 10 with two days to go, although lost time as the race entered the mountains and slipping down the general classification leaderboard to finish 24th, 49’17” down on the winner Pauline Ferrand-Prévot – the mountain bike legend and Paris 2024 Olympic champion making the switch to road in the off-season and winning the sport’s biggest race at her first attempt.
Pieterse will stay in France to compete at round 13 of the 2025 WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series in Les Gets, Haute-Savoie, although she is yet to confirm if she will line-up at the 2025 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Valais (Switzerland) or in the series’ final three rounds in Bike Kingdom - Lenzerheide (Switzerland), Lake Placid (USA) and Mont-Sainte-Anne (Canada).
Pieterse, who sits fifth in the XCO rankings and fourth in the XCC, will have fond memories of Les Gets, Haute-Savoie, and hasn’t finished outside the top two at the venue in her two previous Elite UCI World Cups – winning 2023’s XCC and 2024’s XCO.
