Puck Pieterse wins the Dutch national championships as Marianne Vos fades away on final lap
Cyclocross
The superb Puck Pieterse has won the Dutch women’s national championship with a brilliant performance where she never showed any signs of weakness, and won by over a minute. Pieterse beat second place rider Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado, and Denise Betsema came third.
After the first lap, Puck Pieterse had already built up a lead of 15 seconds ahead of Marianne Vos and Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado who were chasing behind. But Pieterse looked superb, and by lap 3 Pieterse had turned things up a notch and led by an ominous looking 35 seconds that would only continue to grow.
Behind the leader, Alvarado had also made a move and Vos could nothing as her rival for second place went off in to the distance. Vos is of course back in the cyclocross field after missing last winter, and is an eight time world champion in this discipline, but was over a minute behind the leader coming to the end of lap 3 and things only got worse.
During the fourth lap, Vos started looking over her shoulder as the group of Bentveld, Van der Heijden, Betsema and Van Alphen started to come back at the legendary rider. And just like that, on the star of the final lap Vos was overtaken by Denise Betsema and saw her chances of a medal slip away.
But in the end, there was nothing anyone could do about the imperious Puck Pieterse. The 22 year old, who was the best young rider at the Tour de France Femmes last year, will now go in search of her first cyclocross world title next month where she will be up against Fem van Empel.
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- But no-one is interested in slower, many would like safer so unless they can show that e.g. youth races are safer, it IS useless. It’d be more efficient to electronically limit everyone’s power output at steep gradients (down of course) or specified sections, am sure technically it isn’t that complicated or expensive but there’d be an outcry so forget it.Mistermaumau12-01-2025
- Agreed, as said here and has been superficially discussed before, it is the whole peleton and race that has gotten faster, the very best like these three, are still only winning by the same margins as elsewhere in history, they haven’t discovered any new distinguishing product. I mean, if an ageing Cavendish, Thomas and others can still deliver sometimes, nothing much can be going on.Mistermaumau12-01-2025
- Yes, but then again, unlike some, they are not presented with a list of questions to prepare answers and journalists keep the prerogative to reassemble quotes in whatever order makes a story so in many cases we have no context of in which situation/relation he said it. I think, as I’ve implied before, people should revert to taking more time to try and get the feel of what or why someone is saying to get the broad view as opposed to focusing on a detail. I know people love the short and cool statements found on SM but they rarely lead to constructive discussion, reflection or understanding, just impulsive reactions which is great for revealing someone’s feelings but says little about the background that created them.Mistermaumau12-01-2025
- I think in his case it might just be lack of mental coaching. He had a great run and it’s gone without visible reasons. 2023? 2024? Blaming others but achieving nothing when allowed to reorganise, somehow it’s not so surprising he’s looking for a team. Am sure he could still mix it occasionally but he needs someone to change his attitude. Going back to tattoos, another interesting and revealing characteristical observation, if you discount cultural and gang related markings, you’ll find more tattoos per person in sport when they are strength types as opposed to endurance. And as news is slow or predictable, here’s another to reflect on (not going to discuss it further here), when you look at types of drink rubbish strewn around in nature (and ignore alcohol induced behaviour), you’ll find a huge disproportion between discarded soft/energy drinks and milk/water/juice. A logical person might imagine that has to do with quantity yet ironically much more milk/water/juice based drinks are sold than energy/soft.Mistermaumau12-01-2025
- Pure power, pure talent and a very good support has come to this day.
James2631812-01-2025 - sure, i totally get that he’s incredibly promising. that would be a great thing to say, “WOW, this kid has a great engine and massive potential, so much he makes me think of a young wout van aert!” i get it though, merlier isn’t a professional spokesman. it’s not his job to always say the right thing. someone shoved a microphone in his face and asked him about young guy he’s really excited to ride with. that’s cool. all good, tim. all i’m saying is in an ideal world he might have said something other than that the 20 year old is A LOT FASTER than one of the greatest racers of this generation.OCexile12-01-2025
- Can’t say for sure it would be safer, but we can say for sure it would be slowermobk12-01-2025
- That a very plausible explanation why some of them have tattoos. I'm not aware of such behaviour because I don't follow other sports. Thanks for the explanation even though it may not apply to all scenarios.
KerisVroom12-01-2025 - You realise that’s an extremely ambiguous expression right but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt:-) It may not hold at this level but a lot of guys in sport “offer” themselves a tattoo (the Ironman logo is an extremely popular example) for reaching their personal goal, which can turn into a reason the lose motivation for lack of having another. Obviously Mr X doesn’t have this attitude, more prone to act as to warrant such perspicacious James Bond titles like The world is never enough, but most of us at some point become happy or satisfied with what we’ve achieved or our mind resigns itself to not believing we can attain more and just lose the will to go further in THAT direction. But the again, I don’t recall Froome having any so who knows ;-)Mistermaumau12-01-2025
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