Lucinda Brand bunny-hops towards her tenth victory of this winter: "I knew I could do that from training, today was ideal to try that out in-race"

Lucinda Brand adds to her astounding bilance of this winter with her tenth triumph in Sint-Niklaas, the final round of 2024/25 Exact Cross. Quite surprsingly, her first one in this competition.

However the overload of racing is already getting to Brand too, as she admits after yet another close race against Sara Casasola. "I was glad that the pace dropped off at times, because I was riding around here with tired legs," Brand said afterwards.

Yet she was still able to add depth to her race and dug deep into her skill bag to show off some bunny-hopping in front of the fans in Sint-Niklaas. To the surprise of many. "That I jumped over the bars for the first time this season? Sven Nys (Baloise Glowi Lions team manager) knew I could do that during training, but in a race is a different story. Today was ideal to try that out."

In 32 starts this winter, Lucinda Brand is yet to finish outside the final podium but despite this remarkable trait, she is still trailing by one victory behind the queen of last two winters - Fem van Empel.

"But I'm not thinking about that," she admits. There would be still opportunitities to equal this winter's record of the world champion, but with view to road season, it's not a priority for experienced Brand. "The number of wins is super nice. But every win is different, you can't compare them with each other."