Another run at the Tour, MTB World Championships and debut at Ardennes - busy year ahead for Puck Pieterse
Cycling
While in 2023, Puck Pieterse added only two road starts to her records (one which was impressive 5th place at Strade Bianche Donne), she already got a taste of the fully-fledged road campaign last year. Well, the latter might be still a bit of an overstatement as the Fenix-Deceuninck rider only completed 13 race days on the road, but in her every start, Pieterse left behind a lasting impression.
Her strong performances at the spring classics such as 3rd places in Drenthe and at the Trofeo Binda, 5th at Dwars Door Vlaanderen and 6th at Tour of Flanders weren't even as much of a surprise, but it was at the Tour de France Femmes where she truly shone. A stage win and consistent performances in the early mountain stages almost saw her briefly become the race's overall leader, but eventually she dropped to 11th overall. That was enough to secure a white jersey for the best young rider.
And that was not even the highlight of her season as just two weeks later, Pieterse sold her great form with world title in the Olympic mountain bike discipline (XCO), taking revenge for the Olympic Games disappointment (came fourth after untimely puncture). The plan this year is no less than to defend that jersey.
For the rest of the 2025 season, you can see below that Pieterse will ride a mostly similar programme to last year's. Her debut at the moment is scheduled for the Dwars Door Vlaanderen, but it's not written in the stone that we won't see the 22-year-old in action sooner than at the start of April.
Schedule of Puck Pieterse for 2025:
- Dwars Door Vlaanderen - April 2
- Tour of Flanders - April 6
- Amstel Gold Race - April 20
- La Fleche Wallonne Femmes - April 23
- Liege-Bastogne-Liege Femmes - April 27
- MTB World Cup (Nove Mesto) - May 23-25
- Tour de France Femmes - July 26 - August 3
- MTB World Championships (Crans Montana) - September 13-15
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- i remember when not too long ago mathieu was regarded as a real tactical knucklehead. i’m not sure that was ever quite accurate, but it’s certainly the case that over the years he has become a real master tactician. in the biggest races, van der poel rarely makes choices that don’t fully optimize every specific advantage he has.OCexile23-03-2025
- Whatever the result, I believe the strategy by UAE to launch Pogacar was absolutely the right one. Unfortunately, they just were not able to execute it the way they must have planned, being all over the place at the start of the Cipressa.Cooldude23-03-2025
- They are without doubt not just the best two classics riders of this generation, but amongst the best of all time. MvdP is more suited to MSR and PR (which Pog has yet to race), while Pog is now almost untouchable at LBL and Lombardia. RVV is the only one where both basically have an equal chance to win.Cooldude23-03-2025
- bravissima!
maria2024202423-03-2025 - According to Tadej's Strava upload, he went up the Cipressa at an average speed of 37.6kph. Rocket ship! He did the 5.63km verified 'Cipressa' Strava segment in 8:59 minutes, which has a 4.3% average grade and total elevation gain of 229m. Naturally, he got the Strava KOM.Pogboom23-03-2025
- In Track and Field, there's Usain Bolt in the sprints and Kenya's Kipchoge in the marathon. Though Bolt can quite easily beat Kipchoge in the 100m dash, he probably won't even finish a marathon. Tadej won't beat Mathieu in a sprint, yet he wins the TDF while MVDP languishes in 50th place. Both are great champions in their respective fields, but my admiration goes to Tadej for trying.FredMan23-03-2025
- They went into the race as co-leaders!frieders323-03-2025
- He can win that sprint if he plays it right but leaving tha gap was ridiculous ! A spring after 6+ hours isn't a guarantee for MVDPfrieders323-03-2025
- The climbs are steeper on Flanders giving Pogi the advanatge as we saw before when he won!frieders323-03-2025
- VDP is best in a short sprint, so Pog was purposely leaving a gap in hopes that VDP wouldn't have enough to sprint for 310 meters at the end of 300 KM. Kwiatkowski did the same thing to Sagan at that same point and won because of it.acem8223-03-2025