This video set my all time record with over 450,000 social views. That’s a bonus I never expected when I shot this clip of Puck’s unexpected connection with the crowd.
Like most of us covering the 2026 World Road Cycling championships in Montreal, I was walking around with my trigger finger on my camera all day, two eyes peeled in different directions, for anything cool to share with PEZ fans. 
Standing just outside the journalists Press area at the start Finish Line, I was tracking the elite women’s road race finish just to pick up some b-roll of the riders as they had crossed the line and came on by.
“Oh, here comes another rider.” I think to myself… Not quite sure who it is, but I lined them up in the frame of my iPhone (super high-tech here) and just start rolling.
Next thing I know Puck Pieterse attempts to pop a wheelie, instantly gets an enthusiastic crowd reaction, decides she’s gonna make this stick and goes for pop number 2. The crowd goes bananas.
She can’t hold the wheelie, shuts the whole thing down in the sweetest most self-deprecating way I’ve seen from a pro rider in a long time, which just ignites the fan love into a complete frenzy.
People go bananas, beat on the boards, yelling and screaming.
They love this. I love it.
It was such a great moment of pure raw, unfettered emotion after an extremely gruelling race, there was literally no way you couldn’t completely get engulfed in it. And that’s one thing I really appreciate about being at a race and capturing moments like this, but also the women’s races because I do see a lot more of that “let the emotion out” in the women’s field, which I think makes the events so much more personal, so much more engaging and so much more fun to watch.
Later in the press room I spent about 3 hours sorting, editing and posting the video above of the day – which scored a more typical 3,000 views across my channels.
You never know what you’ll capture, even for just a few seconds, or how it will catch the algorithm and go viral.
#montreal2026 #puckpieterse #wheelie
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