Return Pieterse through Van Empel's eyes: "She's eager to show herself"

Fem van Empel won a cyclo-cross race for the sixth time as world champion this season. The Dutch rider didn't have to go at full speed but still had some thinking to do afterward. She elaborated after the race on her victory, which was partly made possible by crashes from her competitors.

In the end, Van Empel rarely handed off the lead and was able to solo to victory peacefully. At the finish line, she had a 20-second lead over her two biggest rivals, exactly the gap you more or less lost in a minor crash. "I must say I can't complain after this race. Technically, it can always be better; the bits uphill were tricky," said the Dutch rider.

Van Empel came from a training camp in Spain, where she mainly practiced on the road. "A cyclo-cross bike feels different from a road bike, but it went well. I can't complain. I didn't have a cyclo-cross bike there, so I used the road bike," said the Visma | Lease a Bike lady. "The temperature difference was definitely big compared to today, and a different bike meant a different feeling, but I quickly recovered. It was putting pressure on everyone, the whole race here because they had a target point chasing me."

Read more below the photo.

Van Empel here in archive picture.

Van Empel on Pieterse's return

For the world champion, it is also a bit of a transition, she admitted honestly. The road season is still pretty much in the system. "That's why I can still improve technically. There is work to do, but I am happy with today. I think it was just a matter of keeping the pressure on," she said about how to win the cross. "In the end, they still come back."

"Accelerate uphill and create a gap" was the tactic. That worked, as both of Van Empel's competitors crashed. "If you were first in the descent and on the tricky strips, you could follow your own lines. In the wheel, you don't have that, and you still have to chase, then a mistake is easily made," the world champion concluded with a valuable lesson for the rest.

On Sunday, Puck Pieterse returns in the cyclo-cross, a friend and competitor of Van Empel's. "It's great that she's back. She's keen to show herself, and that's great for the sport, so I'm also looking forward to that."

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