Over her 16 years on the road, Brand has chalked up some notable successes. Her wins include the the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in 2017, the Internationale LOTTO Thüringen Ladies Tour in 2021, the Tour de Suisse Women in 2022, the Dwars door het Hageland last year, three stages of the Giro d’Italia Internazionale Femminile and an eighth-place finish in last year’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
Strong, ambitious, fiercely competitive
Brand is considered an all-rounder on the road, and she appears to be the epitome of that term. In the 2024 Tour, she played a vital support role for Elisa Balsamo in the early bunch sprints and later for teammates Gaia Realini and Shirin van Anrooij in the hills and mountains. She was as surprised as anyone at her top 10 finish in the GC. “To be honest I didn’t know I had the legs that I’ve had over the whole week,” she said at the time. “In the beginning, I knew I would be good, but as good as this? I didn’t expect it at all. It’s nice to see what happens after all the effort we’re constantly putting in.” She was 35 years old then, which is a remarkable feat for any rider, just as remarkable as her current dominance of cyclocross at age 36.
In addition to the accomplishments in cyclocross cited above, during the 2024-25 season she completed a sweep of all three major cyclocross series – the UCI World Cup, Superprestige and X2O Badkamers Trofee – and was the only rider, man or woman, to finish in the top 3 of every one of the 27 races; the next best competitor was on the podium in 12 races. In addition, she won 8 races in the three series, a total matched only by van der Poel. By the way, she has swept all three cyclocross series three times now, also accomplishing the feat in 2021-22 and 2022-23. And she could do it again this year, as she leads in all but the Superprestige because she missed the first race of the series. But she has won the last two races and, with four races to go, looks to be the favorite to win again.
What differentiates Brand from most of her rivals is her strength, incredible stamina and fierce competitiveness. Speaking ahead of the 2022 Paris-Roubaix Femmes, she said, “I’m not a nice person in the bunch. I will fight to win.” And she is fearless, saying in that interview: “If you start thinking about things like crashing, you will be in the back of the bunch. Once you feel like this is the moment I really need to move, suddenly you’re not really thinking about it anymore. It’s still scary, but you kind of delete it from your mind.” She finished third in that race, behind Longo Borghini and Lotte Kopecky.
Inspired to ride by family
Born on July 2, 1989, in the Dutch city of Dordrecht, Brand took up cycling because of the men in the family. As she put it, “My brother Giancarlo wanted to race because our father had been a competitive bike rider before we were born. I had to tag along. I just wanted to do what my brother and dad did and loved it straight away.”
She competed in the Dutch Cyclocross Championships for the first time in 2007, finishing 21st at the age of 18. Though she always maintained a love for the discipline, Brand focused on road racing early in her career. She made her road pro debut in 2009, riding for the Leontien.nl team, and earned her first win that year, taking the Dolmans Heuvelland Classic in South Limburg with a strong solo. In 2011, she won the bronze medal in the U23 European Road Championships, beaten in a sprint by two Russian riders. Finishing sixth in that race was the two-time Giro d’Italia Women winner Elisa Longo Borghini.
In 2012, Brand notched her first pro win in a stage of the Tour Féminin en Limousin, won a stage of La Route de France, finishing fifth in the GC, and she came in third in the team time trial at the World Championships in Valkenburg. Her success that year caught the eyes of several top women’s teams, and she was soon signed by the Rabobank–Liv Giant team in 2013, for whom she rode until 2016, the year she won the Tour of Norway.
In 2017, she moved to Team Sunweb and won the Team Time Trial World Championship. In 2019, she won the green jersey in the Madrid Challenge by La Vuelta, finishing second in the GC, and won the gold medal in the Mixed Relay Team Time Trial World Championship in Harrogate. No, she’s not the greatest of all time, but she certainly has produced one of the most impressive careers in the sport.
One more world championship?
Looking over her Palmares, it seems that Brand has aged like a rare wine, getting stronger with the passing years. But if there is one sore spot in her curriculum vitae, it must be her many also-rans in the Cyclocross World Championships. In the eight WCs run since 2018, she has won only once, in 2021, finished second four times and third twice. That must be frustrating to a fierce competitor like Brand. And that frustration spilled over earlier this year at the World Championships in Liévin, France, when, after a thrilling and robust duel, compatriot Fem van Empel (Visma–Lease a Bike), who also won in 2023 and 2024, rode past her on one of the final bends and seemed to swerve and take her into the fences.
“I tried to be ahead of her toward the off-camber section,” Brand said afterwards. “She rode me skillfully into the barriers. That blew my move. Afterwards I wasn’t able to turn that into positive aggression, which I’m usually capable of doing. That surprised me. Probably my legs were dead. It wasn’t a nice move and I think I can assume that more people think the same.” Then she added: “I just don’t think it was necessary to ride that way.”
Van Empel is currently not riding because of a long unspecified illness, and her return to competition and a start in the World Championship in Hulst on February 1, 2026, appears to be up in the air. Brand has thrived in her absence. However, considering her competitive fire, she will definitely want to have her bitter rival in the race.
But how much longer can Brand keep riding – and how much better can she ride?
