“It would have been cool if we had managed to equal Mathieu van der Poel’s streak. But that’s not the most important thing, right?”
Cor Vos
Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.
Almost a minute after Puck Pieterse mimed reeling in a big fish as she crossed the line victorious at World Cup Maasmechelen, Lucinda Brand idled towards the finish in the wake of young rivals Zoe Bäckstedt and Shirin Van Anrooij. The older rider’s focus was already elsewhere as the youngsters fought all the way to the line, meaning Brand finished only just inside the top 10 – her worst actual finish (disregarding three DNFs) since November 2018.
It was the most clear-cut ‘jour sans’ we’ve seen in a long time, and that’s in large part because of the extraordinary consistency the Dutch veteran has exhibited over the past few seasons, specifically the streak of cyclocross podium finishes that started on 27th January 2024 and culminated 63 podiums later with victory at the Benidorm World Cup round last weekend.
The industrial mining infrastructure on Maasmechelen’s dramatic course provided an ominous backdrop for the end of this chapter for Lucinda Brand.
We’ve become used to seeing Brand first, second, or sometimes third to the flash interview setup on the live broadcast, but not today. Instead, team boss of (deep breath) Baloise Verzekeringen-Het Poetsbureau Lions, Sven Nys, was first to a mic after the elite women had finished at Maasmechelen, telling Sporza, “Lucinda has had a tough week of training ahead of the World Championships [next weekend]. That’s why she’s a bit less fresh today, she told me before the start. But that’s no reason to panic.”
However, Brand then spoke to collected media, contradicting her boss’s earlier sentiments in her characteristically philosophical fashion.
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