Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck) lines up for a third time in her career at Strade Bianche and this time she is one of the main rivals set to challenge outright favourite Demi Vollering on the white gravel roads into Siena on Saturday.
The reigning cross-country mountain bike world champion noted her improved form compared to previous seasons, especially on the road racing scene, and expects to be in the running for a spot on the podium.
“The Strade Bianche was my first big performance on the road ever, so the goal should just be to compete for the prizes in that race again. We will do our best in any case,” she said in an interview with Wielerflits.
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The multi-discipline racer, who competes across mountain bike, cyclocross and road, only began competing on the world-class road racing scene in 2023.
Her first race that year was at Omloop van het Hageland and then she lined up at the WorldTour's Strade Bianche where she finished fifth place at the end of the punishingly steep Via Santa Caterina and into the Piazza del Campo behind the day's winner Demi Vollering, Lotte Kopecky, Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig and Annemiek van Vleuten.
A sign of a strong future in road racing, Pieterse was 13th at Strade Bianche last year and secured seven top-10 finishes during the Spring Classics before turning her attention to the Paris Olympic Games where she was fourth in the cross-country mountain bike race.
In her debut at the Tour de France Femmes, she made her greatest performance in road racing so far, beating Vollering to win stage 4 in Liège, and then securing the best young rider classification.
Pieterse believes that she has made more improvements in her road racing form this year, and indeed in her first race of the season at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, she was the only rider who could stay with Vollering on the Muur van Geraardsbergen. The pair sprinted for the final podium spot behind the leading breakaway Lotte Claes (Arkea-B&B Hotels) and Aurela Nerlo (Winspace Orange Seal).
"That shows that I have taken another step," Pieterse said. "The good thing was that we started the Muur van Geraardsbergen quite fresh, which was perhaps to my advantage to be able to follow Demi. Last year, I had to let go on the Muur, this year I could follow. I was very happy with that.”
At Strade Bianche on Saturday, Vollering, who won the 2023 edition, will be the outright favourite and Pieterse is one of the major contenders alongside a few of the sport's biggest starts; Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ), Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime), and Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto).
She said that her body had recovered from the cyclocross season and that she had an opportunity to train in the warmer weather with Fenix-Deceuninck in Spain and is hoping to see the effects of her training block at Strade Bianche.
"We stayed in a high-altitude hotel there. So last weekend it was still a bit of a wait-and-see situation, which is logical when you have just come from a high-altitude training camp," she said.
The women's field will compete across the 136km race that features one additional gravel sector this year for a total of 50km split across 13 sectors of off-road - a route that should perfectly suit a rider like Pieterse.
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