{"id":457939,"date":"2026-02-04T13:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T13:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/457939\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T13:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T13:58:08","slug":"one-last-dance-former-dutch-monument-winner-announces-retirement-at-the-end-of-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/457939\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cOne last dance\u201d \u2013 Former Dutch monument winner announces retirement at the end of 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cTime flies when you&#8217;re having fun! From the local NWVG Cycling to Rabobank\/Belkin to <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/lidl-trek\" title=\"Lidl-Trek\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lidl-Trek<\/a>. I&#8217;m very grateful to have lived my dream for 20 years. Now it&#8217;s time to start my final season as a professional rider. One more year, one last dance. See you on the road!\u201d Mollema captioned a compilation post of his career on his social media page.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Because now the season is about to start. Race numbers are about to be pinned on. Start lists are beginning to take shape. And suddenly, this is no longer a distant farewell. It is happening now.<\/p>\n<p>A career that explains why this feels differentMollema\u2019s career sits in a very particular place in Dutch cycling history. He is not simply a long-serving professional reaching the end. He is a rider whose palmar\u00e8s stretches across nearly two decades at the top level, from the Rabobank era through to <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/lidl-trek\" title=\"Lidl-Trek\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lidl-Trek<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He is a Monument winner at Il Lombardia. A winner of Cl\u00e1sica de San Sebasti\u00e1n. A two-time stage winner at the Tour de France. A former sixth-place finisher overall at the Tour, with top-ten general classification results across all three Grand Tours during his career.<\/p>\n<p>He has been a general classification rider. A breakaway specialist. A hilly classics contender. And he remained relevant through each phase.<\/p>\n<p>Very few riders manage that evolution without fading quietly from the picture. Mollema never did.<\/p>\n<p>Why \u201cone last dance\u201d carries real weight<\/p>\n<p>When he writes \u201cone last dance\u201d, fans do not picture a farewell criterium. They picture the races where he has already left his mark.<\/p>\n<p>Lombardia. San Sebastian. The mountains of the Tour de France. The long solo days out front have become part of modern race memory.<\/p>\n<p>That is why this final season will feel different.<\/p>\n<p>Every time his name appears on a start list in 2026, there will be an unspoken line attached to it. The last time.<\/p>\n<p>No dramatic announcement was needed. His career already provides the context. This Instagram post simply marks the moment where that reality begins to settle in for everyone else.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cTime flies when you&#8217;re having fun! From the local NWVG Cycling to Rabobank\/Belkin to Lidl-Trek. I&#8217;m very grateful&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,235773,784,49602,85],"class_list":["post-457939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bauke-mollema","tag-cycling","tag-lidl-trek","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}