Proudly wearing her new rainbow jersey, Lucinda Brand soloed to victory - her 20th this cyclo-cross season- at the Exact Cross Waaslandcross in Sint-Niklaas on Saturday. Brand tried a few times to escape early on in the race, but would always be brought back by an elite group until she powered away on the final lap to take the victory.
“It’s really nice to win in this beautiful jersey,” the Baloise Verzekeringen-Het Poetsbureau Lions rider said.
Crelan-Corendon teammates European champion Inge van der Heijden and Belgian championMarion Norbert Riberolle finished second and third, respectively.
“It was a really hard battle, it definitely was not an easy day. It was hard to ride alone in the front so you really had to make a big gap so the other riders behind couldn’t profit anymore. You could see that it was really hard for everybody so in the end, it became a tactical race.”
Though she has dominated this season, the world champion did admit that she is starting to feel some fatigue.
“I'm tired, my tank is a bit empty,” Brand told Sporza.
According to her cyclo-cross team manager, Sven Nys, the 36-year-old rider has also started her training for the road season in preparation for Strade Bianche on March 3, with her road team Lidl-Trek.
"If you see what she has already done this week of road training ... Those were training sessions of 5 to 6 hours. That will also weigh in at the end of a long cross-country season,” Nys told Sporza
"But the Strade Bianche is coming, and Lucinda opens her road campaign there.”
Brand finished 73rd at her last appearance at Strade Bianche in 2021.
But before turning her attention to the rad, the Dutch rider will tackle the eighth and final round of the X2O Badkamers Trofee series, the Brussels Universities Cyclocross on Sunday. Brand has won six of the seven races and is already assured of a fourth overall victory in the series.
