Reigning ladies’s elite cross-country mountain bike World Champion Puck Pieterse made an enormous 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 Road 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 summer season she targeted on XCC and XCO races, which led her to fourth place within the Paris Olympic Games cross-country MTB race.
The Dutch biking federation, KNWU, gave her an choice to diversify the tip of her season, and she or he jumped on the probability to stay in Europe for street and gravel challenges, quite than journey to North America for XCO and XCC World Cup factors.
“Combining a number of disciplines typically ends in having to make powerful selections. After a profitable Tour de France Femmes, I received the selection to begin on the Road World Championships in Zürich and do Gravel Worlds the week after [in Belgium], or go to the XCO World Cups abroad. Think 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 possibility,” she wrote on Instagram Monday.
“This nevertheless means I received’t present my rainbow jersey or defend my 2nd place within the total this yr. But subsequent yr I’ll for certain be again racing the World Cups giving it my 100%. Already wanting ahead to it.”
Despite lacking the primary pair of MTB world cups that have been held in Brazil, she rapidly moved into first place on the prime of the elite ladies’s standings for XCC and XCO with podiums in all eight races by which she competed. While 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 can 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. Along together with her two podiums at one-day Women’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 Games that Pieterse made an announcement 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, truly. The previous few days I had super-good legs, and as we speak I didn’t really feel my legs in any respect. To take the win right here in a dash towards Demi, that’s actually a dream come true,” Pieterse stated in mid-August after the stage. She additionally wore the mountains classification jersey for a number of days and received the very best younger rider classification that week.
KNWU had not named a full roster for elite ladies on the UCI Road World Championships as of September 11, however Pieterse was fast to notice her invitation to compete for her inaugural look at Road Worlds. She can be anticipated to line up for the 154.1km ladies’s street race on Saturday, September 28. The males’s Dutch group was named final Friday, with Mathieu van der Poel set to defend his street title.
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 is able to happen for elite ladies on Saturday, October 5 in Leuven, Belgium.
The 22-year-old Dutch rider may very effectively have to duplicate 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.
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