Puck Pieterse: "To win here, in a sprint against Demi, is really a dream come true"

Puck Pieterse is an absolute superstar of cycling in the making. The Dutch rider is one of the top Cyclocross and Mountain Bike riders in the world but if there was still any doubt of her abilities on the road, that was shrugged off today as she beat none other than Demi Vollering in one of the toughest stages of the Tour de France Femmes.

“The last few days I had really good legs. Today I didn’t even feel my legs. It went really well. To win here, in a sprint against Demi, is really a dream come true,” Pieterse said in a post-race interview. Pieterse came to the Tour in search of stage wins and this would be more likely in the hilly days. Today, racing into Liège, the riders found plenty short and sharp climbs including the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons. The Fenix-Deceuninck rider was able to match the attack of Katarzyna Niewiadoma which would make the split when it came to the fight for the stage win.

The trio headed into the final kilometer united and with a comfortable gap over the rest, and despite her young age Pieterse knew how to play this finale. “I knew they were going for the general classification. I’m just here for the stage, so I could play poker. I knew that Kasia [Niewiadoma] was going to attack and that Demi was going to close it," she explains. Sure enough this was the case.

But Pieterse admits she made a mistake in the run-up to the finish line. "I went quite early in the sprint, but I've never been here before, so I didn't know where the line was," she says. In the end it was a photo-finish finale with the yellow jersey, but she was announced the winner a few minutes after the end of the stage. "We had to wait a long time for the result. I don't know how I did this. I live for this".