"I will focus mostly on mountain biking to be in the right shape in Paris" - Puck Pieterse focuses MTB for upcoming Olympic Games in 2024

On Sunday morning, in the heart of the Italian Alps, just before the start of the snowy round of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup in Val di Sole, GCN spoke with Puck Pieterse, about her goals in cyclocross and mountain biking for next 12 months.

"I started a bit later this year because the mountain bike season finished really late," she began. "Normally I would be done with MTB just after the World Championships or two weeks after, but this year I was leading the general classification and it went really well, so I made a full mountain bike season. That meant that the last MTB World Cup race was just a week before the first cyclo-cross World Cup round, and it was too much to do everything in one go, so I took a little break."

"The main goal is Worlds in Tábor this year. Of course I’ll go race by race to do my best, but the main focus is to win the World Championships. And for sure I will race at the nationals to defend my Dutch Champion jersey," Pieterse said about her cyclocross goals for this winter.

"I will focus mostly on mountain biking to be in the right shape in Paris. That’s the reason why this year I did the full season of MTB and I will do it again in 2024," Pieterse said. "We did the cross-country test event in Paris this year, it was a bit of an atypical course with a lot of gravel and not so many natural elements but it was quite fun, a bit technical with a lot of up and down. Looks a bit like Dutch courses but with more elevation."