The regulars of the men’s field in cyclocross received stinging beat-downs by part-timers Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert and Tom Pidcock this weekend, who’ve come off impressive road campaigns and gone straight to the top of the podium. For the women, however, it’s been quite the opposite, with the CX specialists taking centre stage. Somewhere in the middle is Clara Honsinger.
The pandemic in 2020 pushed Honsinger to race cyclocross full-time in Europe because there were no races in the US. However, she has now raced her first season with a WorldTour team, EF Education-TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank, and had a more extended road season that included the Classics.
When she began her cyclocross season this year, the landscape had changed. Three 20-year-old specialists have dominated in the elite women’s fields: Fem van Empel leads the World Cup ahead of Puck Pieterse and Shirin van Anrooij and the trio have been pouring the pressure on the more established riders.
Honsinger says they have raised the level of cyclocross but she’s been holding her own, finishing inside the top 10 in most of her races, with her best result a fourth in the Koppenbergcross.
“It’s amazing,” Honsinger said when asked about their success. “In the past three seasons, as they’ve come into the sport, the speed and depth that the field has developed. I think back to when I first started racing, and the women at the fast end of the races were incredibly fast. However, there were maybe three women at that speed. Now we’re looking at eight women at that speed.
“They’ve been pushing each other to go faster and faster, and get stronger and stronger. And it’s amazing that the strides that the sport has taken in the women’s field the past few years, I think it’s definitely been at a rate of growth faster than any other discipline and definitely faster than the men’s.”
Honsinger skipped most of the early season races in the US but scored a victory in her first outing at the Trek CX Cup C1 race in Wisconsin and was the top American in the first World Cups in Waterloo and Fayetteville.
She started her European campaign in Nommay, where she scored confidence-building victories in two C2 races there in October. Rather than chase the World Cup, Superprestige or X2O Trophy series, Honsinger is aiming for consistency and a steady build toward the World Championships in Hoogerheide, February 4-5, 2023.
“I am racing a little bit shorter of a schedule this year. I omitted the US races at the beginning of…
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