Four World Cup overall titles with 27 individual wins. Three Superprestige titles. Three X2O Trofees. Three national titles in the sport's most dominant nation. A 63-race podium streak.
These are results befitting of a real cyclo-cross champion, and qualify Lucinda Brand as one of the most successful and consistent riders of the last seven years. But there's one area where her results just don't line up: the Cyclo-cross World Championships.
Amidst all her individual wins and overall titles, and seasons where it looked like she could hardly be beaten, Brand has a habit of not making it happen on the big days. In nine attempts, she's only won the elite World Championships once, in 2021. It's the same story in the Europeans, just one win, also in 2021.
True to Brand fashion, she has an astonishingly impressive podium streak at Worlds: eight times out of nine she's finished in the top three. The one where she wasn't on the podium? Fourth. So why is that consistency and winning ability she shows the rest of the year just not translating to rainbow jerseys? And is this year the year she could finally add a second world title to her palmarès?
Consistency vs the big moments
Firstly, it must be said that it's not as if Brand is ever particularly far off the win at Worlds. Four times she's finished second, and three times third, so she is always there. In 2022 in Fayetteville, it came down to a sprint against Marianne Vos – something Vos was probably always going to win. In 2020, taking third, she was only a handful of seconds behind the sprint for the win. Last year, she finished second to Fem van Empel with a relatively small deficit of 18 seconds.
There isn't anything that specifically goes wrong for Brand when the rainbow jersey is on the line, and she certainly doesn't struggle more in the big championships. That said, there is the possibility that Brand is one of those riders who just doesn't always have the spark in the big moments.
There are riders who can win again and again, trudging round every corner of Belgium and the Netherlands on grey weekends to rack up win after win in a way that other riders struggle to do. And there are riders who may not win consistently, but have an ability to pull it out for the races that matter. There are riders who can do both, like Mathieu van der Poel, but they're a rarity.
On the road, Wout van Aert is a rider who is consistently always there, but can falter on the days when it really matters. In cyclo-cross, Puck Pieterse is someone who doesn't have to win week in, week out, because she comes alive when the pressure is at its highest.
Brand is perhaps the former. She has the physical consistency and mental fortitude to win again and again and again, and that's why she has so many overall titles to her name, so maybe the only explanation for her relative lack of rainbow jerseys is just that her strength lies more in that repeatability than pulling out the stops on one big day.
The age of Van Empel
Whilst Brand came very close in 2022 and 2020, and did take her big Worlds win in 2021, the last few years have seen one hurdle in the form of Fem van Empel. She was a dominant force in 2023, 2024, and 2025, winning a three-peat of rainbow jerseys in pretty unstoppable fashion.
Van Empel may not have won as many overall titles as Brand – she raced more sparingly – but she really was the strongest rider in the field for several seasons, and Brand couldn't topple that at Worlds.
However, this winter came the sad news that Van Empel would be taking an indefinite hiatus from racing after struggling with her mental health and motivation. It was a really unfortunate situation, and not something anyone would have looked at as a racing advantage, but the fact is, it is going to be interesting to have a World Championships without Van Empel for the first time in four years.
It's like, if you took Van der Poel out of the men's race, it would immediately open it up, and that's what a lot of riders – Brand included – will be hoping for on Saturday. Brand isn't quite the stand-in dominant force in Van Empel's absence, but the lack of the rider who has beat her to rainbow multiple times is surely a tick in the pros column for Brand.
Her chances on Saturday
All of this is the complicated context that will be swirling around Brand when she starts the elite women's race at the World Championships in Hulst on Saturday. At home in the Netherlands, all eyes will be on her, and it would be an extra special place to win her second elite rainbow jersey. She's also just had probably her best year yet, racking up a streak of 63 podium finishes that only came to an end on the weekend, and once again winning the World Cup overall.
But, once again, she is probably not the stand-out favourite in the women's race in the race that Van der Poel will be for the men's title. History and statistics tell us that Brand will finish on the podium – but they also tell us that it won't be on the top step.
In a way that seems almost weirdly prophetic, Brand's dominant streak has only started wavering as the World Championships draw closer. She missed the podium for the first time in over two years for the first time last weekend as Maasmechelen, and that significant moment came at the same time that Puck Pieterse has found her groove, winning back-to-back World Cups on the weekend, and looking ready to succeed her friend and rival Van Empel as world champion.
So, despite having perhaps her best two-year run yet, Brand still isn't quite the stand-out favourite for victory on Saturday, and even without Van Empel there, she isn't the obvious successor.
Short of alluding to a headline-grabbing but overdramatic 'curse', Brand clearly has a mixed history with the World Championships, and sometimes the pressure of the one big day can just be too much. The pressure will be high on Saturday, but her confidence should be too, and even if history isn't on her side, I hope we see Brand in the running to add another world title to her palmarès.
