Ellen Noble raised a bouquet in her right hand and held the first ever Telenet UCI Cyclocross World Cup Under-23 trophy in her left.
She stood on the podium in Hoogerheide, Netherlands, after her worst World Cup performance of the season, a 39th-place finish in the series’ final race.
It didn’t matter.
She clinched the U23 season title by racking up four top-10 finishes at World Cup events.
“I was disappointed (with 39th), but the moment I crossed the finish line they grabbed me to go do the podium. I never had enough time to get down about the race,” Noble said. “To finally walk away with it and know it’s done and we had all made it happen was really exciting.”
She did that racing against elite fields. There aren’t specific U23 races at the World Cup level, so Noble, a Westhampton resident, races in the elite field. Age-group points are awarded to the racers in the elite field. Noble finished sixth overall in the elite standings.
“It’s much easier to focus on the elite and know the U23 results would come form there,” she said. “After the races, I would look who was U23 and where they stacked up.”
She’ll get a much closer look at her U23 competition at the world championships Saturday in Bieles, Luxembourg. This will be the second year a U23 race and title will be contested.
Noble finished sixth last season, the best mark by any American at worlds, and enters this race as the top-ranked U23 rider in the world.
Following her third-straight U23 national championship in Hartford, Connecticut, earlier in the month, Noble returned to Europe, where she’d spent most of the season, to race in the final two World Cup events.
“Being here (in Europe) two weeks leading up to worlds will be good for me,” Noble said. “I’m totally in my rhythm and settled in instead of trying to get things settled.”
She’ll face challenging, potentially sloppy conditions in Bieles and a field she could only fully visualize on result sheets up to this point. The closest rider to Noble in the rankings is Laura Verdonschot of Belgium, second in U23 and 19th overall. Defending U23 world champion Evie Richards of Great Britain is 32nd.
“I know every single race that I enter, even a World Cup with 20 women who are probably gong to beat me, I’m still racing to win,” Noble said. “The only way I’ll feel disappointed is if I don’t try my best or if I have bad luck.”
She’s aiming for the podium, a luxury few American competitors can allow themselves in Europe.
“If I go really hard, if I can find my flow on the course, I could get a medal,” she said. “It would be a big reach. It would be a huge result. I think it could be possible with a lot of luck and a lot of hard work.”
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com.