Puck Pieterse wins the Dutch national championships as Marianne Vos fades away on final lap

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.