The Pitfalls of Cyclocross Bike Exchanges
Brand's pit exchange woes sent us into the archives and the glory days of pit exchange adventures
[Ed. note: Bill has evidently been up to something nefarious on his Instagram account (@cxhairs) and it has been locked for suspicious log-in behavior. Hopefully, access will be restored in the next 24 hours. In the meantime, it’s really bad timing for this post and we apologize for the (hopefully temporary) broken links.]
[Ed. note 2: I’m back! And this now makes more sense. -Bill]
I feel like when we are trying to sell cyclocross to the “outside world,” we often focus on the unique aspects of the sport—the planks, dismounting, remounting, starts, run-ups—but at the end of the day, being a successful cyclocross racer often comes down to a. Being strong and b. Being able to steer your bike. As such, I have long said that features such as the planks don’t matter, until they do. (Svenergy Alert! Svenergy Alert!)
Bike exchanges in the pit are one of those aspects of cyclocross that look neat, but they, more often than not, do not matter in the ultimate outcome of the race.
Until they do, of course.
Lucinda Brand is an athlete who has learned about the importance of bike exchanges from the proverbial school of hard knocks. Her shot at winning the 2019 Bogense Worlds was dealt a severe blow when she tripped and fell during a botched exchange with her dad, of all people.
Brand was again in the limelight at Superprestige Boom when, in the fifth lap, she somehow managed to throw her bike into Ceylin Alvarado’s while both women were making pit exchanges.
Now to be fair, the setup of the situation was a bit more complicated than it looked watching live. With the riders opting to swap bikes at Pit 1 before the climby, descendy technical part of the course, Alvarado and Brand chose pit box locations at the front of the pit in that direction. Alvarado got to the pit first and was in the first position, meaning Brand had to pull around in front of her to exchange her bike. Although quarters were cramped, Brand probably could have done a better job throwing her bike to her pit crew instead of kind of, sort of dropping it in front of Alvarado.
Alvarado got hung up by the wayward bike and had to dismount shortly after making her exchange. Brand, to her credit, waited up for Alvarado after the mishap and then rode with her rival for all of 30 seconds up the cobbled climb before smashing her way up the first steep incline and dropping Alvarado for good en route to taking the win.
While Brand did not pay a penalty in race results for her bad bike swap, she did get fined 120 Swiss Francs for her bad bike swap. We will, no doubt, be watching closely to see if Brand and the Lion mechanics spent some time practicing their bike exchanges during the week in an effort to avoid future donations to the UCI beer fund.
To be fair to Brand—we are big Brand fans here at the Bulletin—she is not alone in having bike exchange issues. Oh no, not by a long shot. Bill dug into the CXHairs archives and found some classic bad bike swaps.
First up are Daaaaaan and Toon getting their bikes confused and then unconfused.
Next up, it’s Lars van der Haar, disappearing. Perhaps in a bid to ensure he can come back.
Then there was the mini pit pileup at Spa Francorchamps.
Even the world champs have their tough days.
Finally, one more featuring Thijs Al reminiscent of the time the crossing guard tried to stop MvdP.