"It's a shame that I made those mistakes" - Lucinda Brand still looking for her best technical abilities after return to cyclocross

Lucinda Brand began her cyclocross season in good form, she attacked the Superprestige Merksplas today but ultimately had to settle with a second place as Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado took the best of her again.

“It's a shame that I made those mistakes. When she came back to me, I was like: don't want to go too fast, don't make mistakes. You see that you actually make mistakes. After that I came back a bit, but it went wrong again," the Dutch rider admitted in a post-race interview. "That is also part of the race. It's a shame, but I think physically I rode as expected. Fine." After a second place in the Dendermonde World Cup, she took the same result this afternoon.

“You want to continue to ride well technically under pressure. It remains difficult to imitate such races during training. That is why it is good to keep riding races and I am happy that I am presented with such courses again," she said. The track in Merksplas was a perfect test for her technical abilities. "The difficult thing is that the forest is very treacherous. In itself it is fast, but it was also very slippery. That is typical for here, but it is also very difficult.”

Baoloise - Trek Lions manager Sven Nys commented on Brand's race afterwards: “You have to stay focused and not get stuck in it. That's difficult, because it makes you angry. I think we were quite successful in just continuing to look for the right lines at the end. We have to take that with us to the next races.”