Puck Pieterse (Alpecin-Deceuninck) took a stunning win at Besançon today, recovering from a dropped chain on the first lap, which saw her lose nearly 30 seconds to the race leaders. She eventually finished 37 seconds ahead of Annemarie Worst (Team 777) in second place and 43 seconds ahead of Inge van der Heijden (Team 777) in third.
“I dropped my chain on the first lap, I think, so that was a bit of a bummer, but I felt I could get back very strong and then decided to go solo,” Pieterse said after the race.
“It cost a lot of energy. I think maybe I wanted to get back there too quickly,” she added. “And then I saw it was still a big front group, and I could ease off a bit and then recover.”
Once recovered, she wasted no time attacking during the second lap and quickly established a solid leading margin.
When asked whether she thought the result would send a strong message to Fem van Empel after her victory at Flandriencross on Saturday, Pieterse said, “We need to show each what we’re worth, of course.”
Third-placed Van der Heijden described Team 777’s podium effort: “We had really good teamwork, so we rode together. Because [Pieterse] was gone, we had a fight in our last lap for the second place. So I'm really happy to share the podium with Annemarie.”
Zoe Backstedt, the 18-year-old Junior World Champion with EF Education-TIBCO-SVB, also had an excellent day finishing in fourth place - her best-ever World Cup finish - just over one minute behind Pieterse.
How it Unfolded
The field set off aggressively but with no clear gaps from the outset of the 14th round of the Cyclocross World Cup. But only minutes into the race, there was a shock as Pieterse ground to a halt on one of the steep mud ascents of the circuit.
It quickly became clear that Pieterse had suffered a dropped chain, which she managed to resolve quickly, but in the midst of the heated opening kilometres of the race, it cost her more than 20 seconds on the race leaders.
Up front Team 777 teammates Worst and Van der Heijden were trying to establish a gap on the dropped favourite, but it took less than a single lap for Pieterse to move back to the front. She then began to push the pace with powerful displays across and pump track before dropping the field on the barriers of the third lap of the Besancon circuit.
Only Backstedt could keep Worst and Van der Heijden in sight, keeping a 10-second gap on the duo coming into the final lap, while Pieterse was a comfortable 30 seconds ahead of the field.
Coming into the final lap, Worst and Van der Heijden began their battle for second place, as Worst attacked within the final kilometre to pull out a 6-second lead on her teammate.
Pieterse was able to celebrate in comfort as she crossed the line to take her ninth victory of the season, setting the scene for an exciting battle with Fem van Empel (Jumbo-Visma) ahead of the World Championships next weekend.
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