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.
“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.”
“I’m tired, my tank is a bit empty,” Brand told Sporza.
“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.”