Post-Race Interviews Don't Matter, Until They Do
Can we turn a few XCO MTB post-race interview nuggs into an entire post? You bet we can.
A while back I was talking to a friend about Media Pit stuff, and when the conversation turned to post-race interviews, they told me they don’t place much importance on trying to get post-race interviews from athletes. Paraphrasing their line of reasoning, especially in road racing, riders usually do not have much to say beyond the usual party line stuff.
Perhaps I am biased because my experience is nearly exclusively with cyclocross racers, and since cyclocross racers have obviously achieved a higher level of human development, I generally like post-race interviews and I think they are important for enhancing the race reports I write and occasionally providing the theme I write them around if some good nuggs are dropped.
This conversation we had came to mind after watching the brief post-race interview with Sunday’s Elite Women’s XCO MTB winner at Leogang, Austria, and thus I am relating it as the hook for this post. The English post-race interviews with European athletes generally don’t provide much insight into the race, but on Sunday, a few brief questions provided insight into how the Elite Women’s race ended up the way it did.
Now, spoiler alert, Sunday’s race was kind of a blowout. And double spoiler alert, the bloweroutter (blowoutter?) was Puck Pieterse. The first spoiler: Not so interesting. The second spoiler: Could be interesting!
Since this is a cyclocross publication, I don’t need to convince the esteemed reader that Pieterse is one of the best content machines in the sport right now. Her cyclocross course preview videos have become must-see TV and she has won hearts on a bigger stage thanks to her already-legendary podium antics.
The humor and snark and chugging multiple bottles of champagne are all great, but you, bike racing connoisseur, also know that at just 21, Pieterse is already a bike racing savant. We wrote a few weeks ago about how her win at Nove Mesto was a masterclass of tactical brilliance. And not only can Pieterse do brilliant things between the tape, she can also express those thoughts in English that is pretty darned good, thus making her worth listening to if gleaning insight into the sport of cycling is your thing.
So what was this nugg of knowledge Pieterse dropped that I spent 350 words writing around?
“My tactic was to start very fast, so maybe the people who start less fast have a disadvantage on the climbs, and I had a little gap in the beginning.”
Like anything we write about here at the Bulletin, this needs some context.
In the first race of the XCO World Cup series, Pieterse found herself in a battle with Pauline Ferrand-Prevot after an unfortunate mechanical took Evie Richards out of the running. Among the riders missing out on the early fireworks was Loana Lecomte, a marked woman thanks to her success in 2021 and 2022. Lecomte recovered, however, and as Pieterse and Ferrand-Prevot were jockeying for the win, Lecomte was pushing forward in a very Jaws-music-like fashion. (Since Lecomte is French, I assume the Jaws music had a distinct accordion vibe, like this)
Ferrand-Prevot and, ultimately, Pieterse were able to keep Lecomte in 3rd, but if the young French star had started just a smidge quicker, she would have been a major problem for the two riders at the front.
Fast forward to last weekend, and Lecomte did get off to a good start. She immediately got in the lead group and then proceeded to control the race until she made a last-lap move to drop the reigning World Champ and get her first win of the 2023 season.
Pieterse finished 5th at Lenzerheide, so she was fully aware Mona Mitterwallner, who finished 7th, was quickly charging through the field from 22nd after the first lap to that 7th-place finishing position. Mitterwallner has been hampered by slow starts in her year-plus of racing the Elites, but she her name has certainly rung out for her climbing prowess and ability to get stronger as races progress.
Given both Lecomte and Mitterwallner have taken a few laps to get going in races thus far this season it is not hard to assume that Pieterse was primarily talking about her two young counterparts when discussing why she started so quickly.
Even before her name rang out after winning the season opener at Nove Mesto, Pieterse was earning some broadcast time by putting her ‘cross skills to work in taking the holeshot in that race. She has been a regular at the front in the subsequent XCC and XCO races, but on Sunday, she got off to a “bad” start, slotting in around 8th after the opening stretch of pavement. Mitterwallner and Lecomte also got off to decent starts, hanging out in the two positions near Pieterse.
Anne Terpstra, fresh off a silver at Lenzerheide, led the opening climb of the prologue. It took Pieterse 3 minutes to get to the front to start to put her go early and go often plan into effect. Mitterwallner struggled with the early fast pace, while Lecomte grabbed onto the lead group of five.
If there was one blemish in Pieterse’s performance on Sunday, it was one that probably hurt just a little bit for her contingent of ‘cross fans.
Since Hoogerheide couldn’t be bothered with a proper off-camber at Worlds this year, Leogang stepped up into its place, throwing in a series of grassy off-cambers on the final descent back to the start/finish (this feature is a regular part of the Leogang course, but it’s fun to pretend it was a direct response to neutered Hoogerheide off-camber, IDK).
The entry to the section ran left to right, with riders kind of coming straight into a little drop. After getting all of the attention for her ‘cross outrigger in Friday’s Short Track race, Pieterse threw out her left leg on the high side of the off-camber and … just completely missed the riding line.
It wasn’t catastrophic or anything—Alessandra Keller did pass her—but let’s go to a live look at cyclocross nation watching our favorite ginger:
After the 6-minute prologue, Pieterse was at the front with Keller and Jenny Rissveds. Lecomte was just a few seconds behind her, while Mitterwallner was a full 18 seconds back after just a short bit of racing.
When you are the overall World Cup leader, even if you don’t have a great race, you still get onto the pregame show. Pieterse’s parting words were a bit tautological for the Leogang course, but hey, they help drive the narrative: “In the end, it will come down to who’s the best climber.”
One interesting twist to Pieterse’s plan for Sunday’s race is that in Friday’s Short Track race, she paid a heavy price for attacking too early. At the front with Pauline Ferrand-Prevot and Evie Richards, Pieterse attacked on the climb inside two to go. Her move helped dislodge Richards a bit, but Ferrand-Prevot patiently abided her storm of watts. When Ferrand-Prevot attacked in the last lap, Pieterse found herself one match short of being able to match the effort.
Temperatures on Sunday were quite hot, so one would not have blamed Pieterse for packing that knowledge away and maybe waiting a few laps to really get turnt on Sunday.
One might think that, but nah. That was not the plan, man.
Pieterse went to the front at the bottom of the massive 3.5-minute opening climb and calmly turned the screws. Terpstra mostly followed her wheel and Rissveds kind of followed her wheel, but Lecomte got dropped straight away.
Pieterse’s first bit of daylight on Terpstra was part of the plan within the plan. When the track left the smooth gravel and entered a more technical dirt section, Pieterse continued to apply the pressure instead of looking out over the damage she had caused.
“I had a few key moments in my head like the end of the end of the first climb, to really push there.”
At the first split after the climb, Pieterse had opened up 21 seconds on Lecomte in 4th and 30 seconds on Mitterwallner in 9th.
Since the working theory of this post is that Pieterse viewed Lecomte, who had won three straight times at Leogang, and Mitterwallner, who climbs like an ibex, as her main rivals who needed to be dropped by an early all-out attack, we will say she quite accomplished her pre-race goal just 12 minutes into the race.
One lap into the five-lap race, Pieterse led Terpstra by 14 seconds, Laura Stigger by 28 seconds, and Mitterwallner, Lecomte, and a slew of other riders by 40 seconds. Now all she had to do was to continue being the best climber for another four laps while dealing with crazy hot temperatures. Easy peasy.
Not content with that small gap, Pieterse continued to, uh, keep applying the heat in, uh, the heat. She extended her lead to 35 seconds after 2 laps and 48 seconds after 3. Showing some of that Puck pluck that everyone has come to love, she did admit she was feeling a bit mortal at the highwater mark of her performance:
“Halfway through I was totally dead, but I had to keep pushing.”
While Lecomte was off her game in the heat on Sunday, the way Mitterwallner finished the race totally 100% validated Pieterse’s pre-race plan. Mitterwallner dropped Ferrand-Prevot on the big climb in Lap 3 and then caught Rissveds and Stigger on the ski lift climb. The young Austrian then dropped the duo near the end of Lap 4 to move into solo 2nd.
Pieterse had the fastest laps in Laps 1, 2, and 3, but Mitterwallner turned it on at the end to one-up her in Laps 4 and 5. Fortunately for Pieterse, she was still the 2nd fastest in those laps, and unlike Nove Mesto, there was no alphorn Jaws music filling the Alps as Mitterwallner never really came close to challenging for the win.
[As an aside, I searched YouTube and WHY IS THERE NO JAWS THEME PLAYED ON ALPHORNS??? Can they do some of that AI art, but for music? Specifically, the Jaws theme on the alphorn???]
The World Cup series heads into a one-week break before resuming again at a venue Pieterse knows well in Val di Sole. With wins at Nove Mesto and Leogang and a wide-angle podium at Lenzerheide, her final words on Leogang also seem like a bit of a tautology:
“The form is good.”
SO GOOD! I'm just giddy for Puck. Just as we've come to refer to certain race antics by MVDP as "VanDerPolean", we need a superlative for Puck's performances. Pucktastic? MegaPuck? Let's get after it, CX fans!
Puck is a very smart cookie. She was the only rider I saw wearing an ice vest at the start and dousing herself with a bidon of ice water every lap. Given her colouring the heat should have killed her- but even that played into her game plan. Also interesting to link to comments on CX Radio where point was made that cross over riders ( CX Road MTB) like Puck work/ train a lot harder than ‘just’ MTB riders. The Fenix MVDP approach may not work for Ceylin but for Puck and Sam Gaze it seems to work OK.