Reigning ladies’s elite cross-country mountain bike World Champion Puck Pieterse made a giant adjustment to her race calendar this week to maneuver nearer to not one, however two extra World titles in a single season. The Dutch multi-discipline rider will forego the ultimate two races on the MTB World Cup circuit to problem elite fields within the UCI Highway World Championships and the UCI Gravel World Championships.
After incomes a bronze medal within the ladies’s elite class on the Cyclocross World Championships in February, the 22-year-old had a flurry of success on the street together with her Alpecin-Deceuninck street group together with podiums at each Ronde van Drenthe and Trofeo Alfredo Binda and a stage win on the Tour de France Femmes. In the summertime she targeted on XCC and XCO races, which led her to fourth place within the Paris Olympic Video games cross-country MTB race.
The Dutch biking federation, KNWU, gave her an choice to diversify the top of her season, and she or he jumped on the probability to stay in Europe for street and gravel challenges, slightly than journey to North America for XCO and XCC World Cup factors.
“Combining a number of disciplines typically leads to having to make powerful choices. After a profitable Tour de France Femmes, I bought the selection to start out on the Highway World Championships in Zürich and do Gravel Worlds the week after [in Belgium], or go to the XCO World Cups abroad. Assume to have the ability to race Worlds is all the time particular and one thing I don’t need to miss, so I went for the primary choice,” she wrote on Instagram Monday.
“This nonetheless means I gained’t present my rainbow jersey or defend my 2nd place within the total this yr. However subsequent yr I’ll for positive be again racing the World Cups giving it my 100%. Already wanting ahead to it.”
Regardless of lacking the primary pair of MTB world cups that have been held in Brazil, she shortly moved into first place on the prime of the elite ladies’s standings for XCC and XCO with podiums in all eight races during which she competed. Whereas she is ranked second in each cross-country classes, the Dutch MTB champion will now skip the ultimate two stops remaining MTB World Cup circuit, a North American swing at Lake Placid, New York from September 27-19 and Mont-Sainte-Anne, Quebec from October 4-6.
The road-gravel double at world championships could be her first look at each occasions. She has demonstrated in spring Classics that she’s greater than succesful on pavé and tough terrain, although she has by no means competed in a serious gravel race. Alongside together with her two podiums at one-day Ladies’s WorldTour races, she completed sixth on the Tour of Flanders, seventh at Gent-Wevelgem, and thirteenth at Strade Bianche.
It was after her near-miss to earn a medal on the Olympic Video games that Pieterse made a press release with a stage 4 win on the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. She not solely excelled over well-known climbs from Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège however sprinted forward of Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) and Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) to safe her first WorldTour victory on the street.
“It’s unbelievable, really. The previous couple of days I had super-good legs, and immediately I didn’t really feel my legs in any respect. To take the win right here in a dash in opposition to Demi, that’s actually a dream come true,” Pieterse mentioned in mid-August after the stage. She additionally wore the mountains classification jersey for just a few days and gained the very best younger rider classification that week.
KNWU had not named a full roster for elite ladies on the UCI Highway World Championships as of September 11, however Pieterse was fast to notice her invitation to compete for her inaugural look at Highway Worlds. She could be anticipated to line up for the 154.1km ladies’s street race on Saturday, September 28. The boys’s Dutch group was named final Friday, with Mathieu van der Poel set to defend his street title.
So as to add to her rising assortment of off-road achievements, Pieterse additionally expects the federation to call her to the ultimate roster for the Gravel World Championships, which can happen for elite ladies on Saturday, October 5 in Leuven, Belgium.
The 22-year-old Dutch rider may very effectively have to copy her Tour stage dash on the Gravel World Championships, the place she may contest a podium end with reigning champion Niewiadoma and final yr’s third-place finisher Vollering.
Get limitless entry to all of our protection of the 2024 UCI Highway World Championships – together with breaking information and evaluation reported by our journalists on the bottom from the junior, under-23, and elite time trials and street races because it occurs and extra. Discover out extra.
