Puck Pieterse may be used to winning on her cyclocross and mountain bike by now, but the 22-year-old multidisciplinary star is still a relative newbie on the road.
In fact, before this year’s Tour de France started on Monday, the Dutch star had only raced 10 times as a professional road rider.
Mind you, on eight of those occasions, she finished in the top 10, including at some of the sport’s biggest classics.
So, it’s no surprise that she’s taken to racing at the sport’s biggest event like a duck to a wet Belgian day, as Pieterse attacked alongside seasoned stalwarts Demi Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma, before holding off Vollering at the line, to take her first pro road victory at the end of a sodden stage in Liège – and one that blew the GC race apart.
(A.S.O./Charly Lopez)
On a brilliantly designed spring classics mash-up course, the yellow jersey contenders initially engaged in a phony war through the Ardennes, as the rain poured on La Redoute and the Côte des Forges and first Chloe Dygert, then potential GC hopeful Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig fell foul of the conditions, crashing on the sketchy looking descents that make up Liège-Bastogne-Liège’s finale every April.
But on the final climb of the day, the Roche aux Faucons, the group exploded, as yellow jersey Vollering drove the pace. Niewiadoma, a perennial contender at the Tour, then launched, forging a group clear containing Vollering, Pieterse, and the young Dutch star’s Fenix-Deceuninck teammate Pauliena Rooijakkers.
(A.S.O./Charly Lopez)
After Pieterse added another few mountain points to the collection she’d inadvertently started earlier in the day while working for Yara Kastelijn, the impetus in the group slowly stalled as Vollering – for whatever reason – refused to co-operate.
However, buoyed by the promise of bonus seconds ASO had plonked on a drag not long after the Roche aux Faucons, and just as the chasers came into view, Vollering kicked again. That was that for Rooijakkers, but the remaining trio ploughed on, building a 30-second lead over a group containing GC rivals Évita Muzic and Juliette Labous (other pre-race contenders such as Mavi García and Riejanne Markus were even further backed) as they descending into Liège’s urban sprawl.
Niewiadoma, like she’s done on so many occasions in past classics, was the first to move, attacking with 800m to go.
But the Polish rider’s move only served to set up Pieterse who – unaware of where the finish was, she later revealed – kicked hard with 200m remaining. The imperious Vollering’s late burst, however, drew her level with her young compatriot, as the two crossed the line side-by-side after a scintillating sprint that looked, for a moment at least, as if it had succumbed to the yellow jersey’s unflinching inevitability.
An agonising wait later, however, and Pieterse’s breakthrough win on the road – just over a week after a puncture robbed her of a medal at the Olympic mountain biking – was confirmed.
29 seconds later, another revelation of 2024, Mauritius’ Kim Le Court led the next group home, after working hard on the front to limit her losses for most of the final kilometres. Despite Le Court’s effort, the writing already looks on the wall for anyone who missed out on the sodden Belgian hills this afternoon.
But while Vollering and Niewiadoma can be happy with their GC efforts, the day belonged to Pieterse.
“It’s quite unbelievable actually. The last few days I’ve had super good legs, and today I didn’t feel my legs at all. And to take the sprint here against Demi, it’s a dream come true,” the delighted 22-year-old said at the finish.
“I knew they were riding for the GC, and I’m just here to win a stage while I’m fresh, so I could play poker a bit in the final. I knew Kasia would attack, and Demi would have to follow, so I just tried to keep a poker face and take it in the sprint. I think I went quite early, but I’ve never been here so I didn’t know where the finish line was!
“We had to wait what felt like ages for the result, but I’m so happy to take the win. I live for this, I worked so much for the Olympic Games, and if you have good legs there, you have good legs here.”
Puck Pieterse has arrived.
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11 comments
Well the wheel bodge adds more lightness
I was looking at the description of the Vuelta route yesterday: one flat stage, five medium mountain stages, eight mountain stages, two individual time-trial stages and five hilly stages (2 with high-altitude finales) - so to do better than last year he'd have to take the three hilly stages that don't have high-altitude finishes and the flat stage, big ask!
Of course English athletes never dope/cheat as they are whiter than white
Ref the drop-less handlebars, I have seen much more radical alternatives for hill climbing bikes. Ive seen a bike with flat handlebars and etap blips for the gears no shifters I think the rider just kept to transmitter electronics bit in their back pocket or somethng, but it wasnt on the shifter. the brakes were kids cable pull with enough to get 2 maybe 3 fingers on it. Its amazing how you can shed weight of a road bike.
I think that was what mark1a was showing us yesterday in the comments on the live blog, his hillclimb bike had the drops chopped off, flat bar brakes on the tops and a rear derailleur controlled by a Di2 climber's blip button, no on-brake controls.
You're absolutely right. The brake levers are Specialized Top Mount (usually used as secondary levers inline with the brifter cables), they weigh 80g for the pair. The SW-R600 is 79g and this shifter/lever combo was less than £100 - compared to say Dura Ace brifters weighing ~250g and much more expensive. Bike is currently 5.99kg and I reckon if I replaced the Mavic Ksyrium SL25 (1580g) with some cheap no-name carbon wheels from a popular far-eastern retail site and then put something lighter than butyl tubes in, it could be touching 5.5kg.
All academic, I won't be breaking any records, I'm 55, 85kg, dodgy knees, it's just fun for the love of bikes.
Wait... did the bike shop that received that bike just swap the tube for one with a longer valve and give the bike back to the customer? Without addressing the destroyed rim?
That rim must be well over-engineered to still be working after that level of fettling. Looks to me like it's a cheapish deep section rim for a fixie - looks cool, but heavier than it needs to be.
I certainly wouldn't trust that as my understanding of wheels is that the strength comes from the rim acting as a compressive component (or whatever the correct term is), so cutting out a wedge like that is going to drastically reduce the strength.
I suspect the rim isnt that weaker because most of the strength in a BSO rim like that will be coming from the rim channel, not the aero side wall.
I'd resist the temptation to ride that down a steep hill though.
I'd have thought it puts force, essentially a bending force as the wheel rotates and compensates for the gap in the aero cover, to the rim channel in a direction it's not designed to cope with and be at risk of metal fatigue.
Probably thought that anyone doing that to a wheel needs to be removed from the gene pool asap.