Looking closely, the most prominent athlete in this phase of the women's season, an interlude between the Northern classics and the start of the major stage races with the Giro and Tour in quick succession, is Demi Vollering. The Dutch of SD Worx he brought home theItzulia Basque Country winning all the stages and then finished third in the Return to Burgos after winning the last stage. A fine response to those who, faced with the many Italian victories in the spring and the resulting Dutch defeats, he had defined it as not up to the level of the great stars of orange cycling.
If we have to talk about Demi Vollering, who was indicated by everyone as the future leader of Amsterdam cycling when Annemiek Van Vleuten he will decide to end his fantastic career (but considering how he is still capable of making the difference like in the last Liège-Bastogne-Liège, it is not something imminent…), we can't ignore another champion, Anne Van Der Breggen, because their destinies are strongly linked.
A placement that is worth the future
Demi started racing late in 2015, when she was already 19 years old. She made her apprenticeship, first racing in national races and then making herself more and more visible abroad until in 2019 she snatched a contract with ParkHotel Valkenburg and it is immediately evident that she knows what she is doing, with 7th place at the Amstel and above all 3rd at the Liège won by a wide margin, no wonder, from Van Vleuten. Anna Van Der Breggen was also in that small group fighting for second place, and she was struck by that girl. He researches to understand who she is, how she got to those levels. In short, he begins to follow her.
Anna would like to take a break, but the lockdown arrives, postponing the Olympics by a year, and so she's forced to pull off one more season than expected. However, the great Dutch champion, already on the verge of stepping down and becoming a team manager, is thinking about the future and looking for an heir. She calls Danny. Stam, the sports director of Sd Worx and tells him to arrange a meeting with that girl: «If I have to get through another year – that's the gist of it – let's make it productive and lay the foundations for when I'm no longer running.Let's bring her here, then I'll take care of it."
"You left too soon."
In those days, Demi often thinks: "Several teams had contacted me, but none made me feel as desired as SD Worx. I just couldn't give it up. I felt protected, important, and above all, I found a true guide in Anna. She told me that at my age, she rode like me, good on the climbs but with an excellent sprint, but that's not enough; you need so much more to win. In every race, she told me where I had done well and where I had done less well. She can also be tough: I remember that At the 2020 Flèche Wallonne, where I finished third while she had won, the first thing she said to me was “you started too early, otherwise you could have won”. He had already taken me under his wing…».
The two have become almost inseparable. In her last year of activity, Anna tried to teach her everything she could by being with her on the run, making her understand that soon it would be up to her to manage the team and finalize the actions. In 2021 the leap in quality was evident, with podiums in series up to the conquest of his first “Monument”, the Liège, which would be followed by two other victories in the World Tour, in two stage races: «Having won the Liège at the beginning of the season reassured me, it freed me – he stated at the end of the year – but I know that I have to be at this level for at least another two years before I can truly say that I am among the best in the world». Van Der Breggen's teachings had been accepted…
A success for Amy
At that point Anna was calm, she left the team in good hands. Now she's on the other side, but with Stam she knows that Demi needs a network of cyclists around her who can support her, which is why she's already thinking about the transfer campaign for next year.Demi, for her part, experienced the start of the season, her first as sole captain, not without suffering, and the lack of results made her increasingly nervous.
It was already clear at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, her first outing of the season, where she was beaten in the two-man sprint by Van Vleuten. At the finish line, she couldn't hide her tears: "I wanted to win, I wanted to dedicate this race to Amy (former European champion Amy Pieters in a coma after a terrible fall at the Dutch national team training camp in Calpe in December, ed.) who is running a much more difficult race than ours."
And now a yellow dream…
The fact that Vollering is emerging in stage races is no coincidence. What she achieved in the Basque Country will go down in history; never before has a cyclist managed such a string of victories without leaving anything to her opponents: "I was lucky," she said after the last of her three victories. "I found myself with the opportunity to win, and I did it. Now I can cross it off my bucket list, I have more confidence for the Tour».
Yes, the Tour. She's been thinking about it for a long time, and Van Der Breggen herself has never hidden the fact that, since she herself cannot compete (the French race was reintroduced to the calendar too late, having not been selected for the last edition under the previous management, in 2009), she has identified the Tour as her team's primary objective for 2022. "The Tour will pass near my home in Switzerland," Vollering stated. La Planche des Belles Filles is a climb I really like and that suits me. And the yellow color suits me very well, too…».
