Demi Vollering (Pijnacker, The Netherlands, 26 years old) arrives exhausted at the finish line, second in the time trial after Reusser, her teammate, but with the satisfaction of having fulfilled her duty and her first final victory on the Tour, which may be the beginning of an era, since his great rival until now, Annemick Van Vleuten, out of the podium at the end, and one of the great dominators of the last decade, retires from cycling. “Yesterday I already saw that something was wrong with me,” the Movistar runner commented disappointedly at the finish line.
Demi Vollering was born in the Dutch region of South Holland, and says that the mentality of the women of her land is what has pushed her to success in cycling. “We know what we want and we work hard to get it,” she says, that and the fact that in her country, riding a bike is almost like walking. “Almost since you were born.”
In fact, Demi always wanted to ride a bike, and even dreamed of being a cyclist when she was still pedaling on training wheels, at the age of two. “She was very stubborn,” she commented in an interview. When I grew up as a child, in the streets where we lived, I always rode with other children, who were all a bit older than me, so I also learned to run faster.” When she was twelve she joined a hiking cycling club and was amazed by her experience. She would go out on the weekends, she would stop on the way for a soda and a piece of apple pie and she was hooked, but also, her cousins would race each other, “and I wanted to do that too”.
Little by little, Demi grew as a cyclist, while also slowly moving away from the family business. Her father had a flower growing business with her uncle. Vollering had already signed up for the Parkhotel, to take her first steps as an amateur runner, and she began to make it compatible with work. First she took two days to train, then she only worked two days a week, as she was improving in her career. But being a woman and a cyclist is not easy to earn a living. “It felt strange to come back from training and relax and see the rest of the family working hard.” But her parents supported her when she still didn’t earn money from cycling. She was left with the family car to go to the races, and also to visit her boyfriend, Jan de Voogd, who lived in Switzerland. He also, who became her manager, encouraged her to quit her job and dedicate herself to cycling at full capacity.
In 2019, with the Parkhotel, she won her first races as a professional, and despite the stoppage due to the pandemic in 2020, SD Worx set out to sign her. To do this, she sent Anna van der Breggen, two-time world champion and with four editions of the Giro to her credit, and Chantal Blaak, road and track world champion, to her house in Switzerland, to convince her to give step. She got it, and since then, her palmares hasn’t stopped growing, she’s enrolled in the best team in the world, although she says she doesn’t feel pressure, because the yoga she does every morning relaxes her.
In 2021 he won the Liège-Bastoña-Liège and was third in the Giro. In 2022, she launched Itzulia with an unthinkable milestone: she won all three stages and was second in the Tour after Van Vleuten.
2023 has been the year of its final hatching. He won the Strade Bianche and Across Flanders. He signed up the entire triptych of the Ardennes with the Amstel Gold Race, the Fleche Wallonne and Liège; He won two stages in the Vuelta, one of them the main day in the Lakes of Covadonga, and lost the general due to an oversight, when he stopped to urinate just when Van Vleuten’s Movistar attacked.
He gave up the Giro to prepare for the Tour and in France he has taken his revenge. The mentality of Dutch women has helped her. And also the cell phone that her partner forgot at the top of Tourmalet when they went to recognize the ascent a few months ago. They had to ride their bikes back up to retrieve it. The layout was known by heart.
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