Puck Pieterse is the 2024 MTB World Champion!
Puck Pieterse made history on Sunday as she won her first elite MTB World Championships, becoming the first Dutch woman to ever win the rainbow jersey in a XCO event.
“I cannot comprehend it yet! I wrote at my own pace from the start, and I thought ‘I need to go all in if I want to win this’. I kept pushing and apparently it was enough. My first elite world title, and I’m just so happy,” said Puck in a post race interview.
The 22-year-old rider dominated from the start the Olympic Cross-country race, crossing the finish line with a lead of 59-second ahead of her Dutch teammate Anne Terpstra and Italian Martina Berta. The 4-km course in Pal Arinsal, Andorra, required five laps that she completed in one hour, nine minutes and forty-one seconds.
Puck adds this victory to an already impressive season, in which she won the European mountain bike title and three World Cup races. It also follows the disappointment at the Paris Olympic games where she missed the podium after a puncture two laps before the finish.
