Reusser steals the show again in press conference: “Maybe it was karma, on Teide they were a bit f*cked”

Reusser crashed hard in the UAE Tour on 6 February. At the time, it was said that she had escaped with little more than road rash, but the damage turned out to be more significant. A leg injury and a shoulder problem kept her out of competition for two months, which made her win in Dwars door Vlaanderen all the more surprising. “This is so nice, I’m so happy,” she beamed in the flash interview.

Before the start, Reusser had no real idea where she stood. “I still had some question marks. I knew my shape was good, but how good? I had no idea. I knew I wasn’t at my very best, but let’s see.” Afterwards she added: “At the beginning I felt really bad. I struggled with positioning, but I kept believing in myself.”

The fact that Reusser eventually went clear with former SD Worx teammate Demi Vollering of FDJ-SUEZ was an ideal scenario. Movistar still had Cat Ferguson as a sprint option in the group behind, which meant Reusser could sit on Vollering’s wheel. “That was ideal, because she had to go. I could follow for a long time, and that’s why I won by a very small margin.”

An upbeat Reusser appeared in the press conference afterwards, still looking slightly surprised by how good her legs had been. “You should never judge your legs, never say whether they are good or bad. But in terms of positioning I really struggled. I was nervous because I hadn’t raced for a long time, and then you come back in a race like this. Still, I kept going and I did feel that I had something left if the opportunity came.”

That opportunity arrived when Reusser moved clear with Vollering. It looked as though the two would sprint it out between themselves, but because Vollering waited so long, Lieke Nooijen of Visma | Lease a Bike came back from behind. “She was a surprise. By the time they said it in my radio, Lieke had already gone past. I knew then that I had to gamble, and I launched a long sprint from the wheel.”

“That was perfect for me,” concluded Reusser, who is not usually seen as one of the most explosive riders in the peloton. Added to that was the lingering leg injury from the UAE Tour. “My leg is still not back at full power, so I was lucky with how this played out.”

The fact that Reusser still has not fully regained her explosiveness after two months says a lot about the injuries she sustained in the UAE Tour. “I deliberately didn’t share photos of my injuries, because they didn’t look good,” she laughed in conversation with IDLProCycling.com. “It wasn’t terrible, but I really had a deep wound in my knee. Nothing was torn, but for a long time I couldn’t use my knee properly.”

In the end she was allowed to ride again, although only at an easy pace at first. She could build hours on the bike before her shoulder started to protest. “For my leg I needed longer training sessions, but my shoulder didn’t like that at all. We had to find the balance, so I often trained on the rollers as well, just to spare my shoulder. Today the main question was whether I’d be able to handle the cobbles.”

She managed that, which once again underlined Reusser’s conviction. “I know the process, and before the UAE Tour I had already been ill in Mallorca. So I hadn’t ridden much for a long time, but from experience I know you can become very good again very quickly. Not top shape, but with patience and time you don’t lose that much if you’re normally already very fit.”

“That’s different when you really damage bones or muscles, but I could actually use my leg again fairly quickly. I lost some mass and strength, but not all my muscle power. I could still do several exercises because it was only one muscle in my leg. And then I had a very good training block in Andorra.”

Andorra? Yes, because Reusser could not go to Tenerife and Teide. “It was fully booked. But maybe that was karma, because in Andorra the weather was great, and on Teide they were a bit f*cked. Sometimes that’s just how it goes.” That line also ties in with earlier IDL Procycling reporting that Vollering and FDJ-SUEZ had to leave Mount Teide because of worsening weather before returning to Belgium for the Flemish races.

Bram van der Ploeg ( X: @BvdPloegg | email : [email protected])