After seeing how much snow fell in New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts the past couple of days in the U.S., we thought it would be a good idea to remind our readers that riding in the snow is fun, too.
While checking the UCI site to see the latest race reports and rankings, we noticed that the UCI had a video of the 2026 Snow Bike World Championships on their site:
Here’s the link to the video of the event on YouTube:
We saw in the comments about the video on the UCI site that Mathieu van der Poel was seen skiing at the same resort on the weekend of the event. That led one person to speculate that Mathieu van der Poel might be thinking about competing in the Snow Bike World Championship in the future.
Van der Poel is one of the greatest cyclists in history. He’s already won world championships in road cycling, gravel cycling and cyclocross. He’s already won a bronze medal in the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships, and he’s reportedly hoping to win the gold medal, too, before he’s done racing.
Van der Poel has even won stages in the Tour de France and led the Tour de France in the past. We would bet that he could do well in snow-biking, too.
It could be a fun way for him to pick up another rainbow jersey.
Here’s a photo of Mathieu van der Poel that we used in an article about him a few years ago, when he was winning World Cup XCO and XCC races and placing second overall in the World Cup XCO series in both 2018 and 2019.
By the way, one of the top riders in the Snow Bike World Championship was another top mountain biker of the past. Cedric Gracia placed fourth in the Super-G and second in the Dual Slalom in the latest Snow Bike World Championship. Gracia was one of the top downhill and dual slalom mountain bike racers in the world in the 1990s and early 2000s, as well as the winner of the Red Bull Rampage in 2003.
Here are the top three riders in the Snow Bike Dual Slalom at the 2026 World Championships:
Cedric turns 48 years old this year, and yet he’s still capable of winning medals in the UCI World Championships. We have to give him credit. He’s an amazing rider.
Here’s a photo of Cedric Gracia on his way to winning the Red Bull Rampage in 2003. (Photo by John Ker/Mountain Bike Action)