Even at a race with a profile as high as the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, there are few riders in the women’s peloton who are in demand from almost all the media. The proven winners, the French riders, the big names – there’s only a select few that get so busy that they have to rush around the mixed zone, their press officers saying “No” to all but the most important outlets.
That select group has a new addition this year, and perhaps its most inexperienced member yet, in the form of Fenix-Deceuninck’s Puck Pieterse. The Tour will mark just the 11th elite road race ever for the Dutch phenomenon, but that hasn’t limited the star status she already has.
For the last two years, Pieterse has been clear about her focus: mountain biking at the Paris Olympic Games. Despite clear promise and hype, she’s decidedly kept her road racing to a minimum, racing just two days on her road bike last year, and eight so far this year before the Grand Depart in Rotterdam.
Finishing her brief but consistently successful annual foray into the Spring Classics with the Tour of Flanders in March, Pieterse’s year since then has been all-in for MTB. A European title and three World Cup wins followed, but when that all-important day in Paris rolled around, it ended in disappointment.
Pieterse started as a favourite – for a medal if not the win itself – but with a flat tire and a slow wheel change had to settle for fourth, not the result the ultra-confident and ultra-talented rider wanted.
However, Pieterse had one more headline-grabbing surprise up her sleeve, confirming shortly after the XCO event that she would be racing the Tour de France Femmes, a quick turnaround and baptism of fire too. This is not only her first Tour de France; it’s her first Grand Tour, and in fact her first stage race of any kind. It’s a big ask, and really a challenge that only a rider with Pieterse’s self-belief and ambition could take on.
And in true Pieterse fashion, she’s not coming to this race just to make up the numbers.
“The shape is good, so I hope of course to get the best out of myself, but the main goal will be to do something nice with the team and to really help the team,” she told the media on the eve of the Tour.
“This will be the first time I will be in the position to actually help. In the Spring Classics, I was more there to get the best result of the team, but now we have two GC girls who can do really well, so I hope I can help them.”
Those riders are 2023 Tour stage winner Yara Kastelijn, and Giro fourth-place finisher Pauliena Rooijakkers, who will be hoping to place the once-Classics focused Fenix team into the top 10 overall with the help of a strong team. Strong, but in Pieterse’s case, very unprepared.
Her two-week preparation period since Paris has been focused on endurance rides and trying to get ready for hours-long days in the saddle this week, an about-turn from the sharp, powerful efforts she’s been honing all year on her mountain bike.
How Pieterse will go in the Tour very much remains to be seen, and her everlasting confidence must be balanced against realistic expectations. The opening half of the race, with its Dutch stages and the Classics-style day on stage 4, will suit her best, but the rest of the race is long and hard, reaching literally new heights for a rider who is used to racing her bike on the side of a mountain, not up one.
“I don’t know how I will perform in the higher mountains,” she admitted. “So probably focusing a bit more on Wednesday and maybe the day after, and afterwards we see how the form is.”
Most other domestiques or debutants in this race, as talented as they may be, aren’t making the headlines Pieterse is – especially for a Dutch rider racing in the Netherlands, a nation that has top riders coming out of its ears. But something – several somethings, in fact – about the 22-year-old makes her stand out, and arguably places her amongst the jewels in the Netherlands’ already-sparkling crown.
Though mountain biking isn’t the biggest sport in the Netherlands, Pieterse’s excellence in the discipline has grabbed attention from across the cycling world. It’s not just her success either, but it’s her whole personality and vibe.
She can be a relatively concise interviewee, but on social media and her YouTube channel, her personality shines through, bringing the fun-loving, dirt-shredding energy from mountain biking and cyclocross to a wider cycling audience. This is a sport that increasingly values riders who are memorable and likeable, and Pieterse has those qualities in buckets.
There’s also the fact that in just 10 days of pro road racing so far, she’s showing promise that has earned her the expectation of being road’s next big star. She performs in the Classics like a young Marianne Vos, racing without fear and with a huge amount of power. With top-10 finishes in many of the spring’s biggest one-day races already, it’s not a long shot to predict that she will be a future Flanders or Strade Bianche winner.
Puck Pieterse is quickly becoming a poster girl for the sport, and her popularity during the Grand Depart is already proving that, regardless of how she does or doesn’t perform this week.
As the world’s biggest women’s race descends on the Netherlands, the long-held centre of women’s cycling, the nation is rolling out all its biggest stars. Demi Vollering, Vos, Lorena Wiebes, and yes, Puck Pieterse. She’s the future of Dutch cycling, but she may in already be the present, too.
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