World champion suffered with pain throughout 2013; will curtail cyclocross season
Marianne Vos (Rabobank-Liv/Giant) is to undergo surgery to remove a cyst from her lower back, the World champion has told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. The 26-year-old has experienced pain for much of the season, and took an enforced rest in the summer, but after having visited hospital again today it has been decided that she will have the operation.
"Perhaps this is the culprit,” Vos said. “It may well be that the cyst is pressing on a nerve and gives me pain at the of my bottom back. I know it is not fine, especially during a ‘cross. That is an outright attack on your body.
After retaining her World road championships in Florence, Italy, at the end of last month, Vos won her first cyclocross of the season, in Den Bosch, Netherlands; a discipline in which she is also World champion. It was not without discomfort, however, with the back problem recurring once again.
“The last laps were definitely not good, no,” she told De Telegraaf.
Having won the Olympic and World titles in 2012, Vos decided to widen her horizons this year and took part in several mountainbike races, including some World Cups. The lower levels of specific road training led to her losing her Giro d’Italia title to the US’ Mara Abbott, and lose her World number one spot to Swede Emma Johansson (Orica-AIS) but still managed to totally dominate the road World Cup, winning five of the seven individual races.
After winning the Open de Suede Vårgårda, in Sweden, she expressed a hope that a short rest had seen her back problems disappear, but it now seems otherwise.
Vos is currently slated to ride the first World Cup of the season, in Valkenburg, and the evening race at the Nacht van Woerden, both in the Netherlands. She currently has no further programme confirmed, and will presumably go under the knife soon after these two races.