In a statement<\/a>, she said: “I found it a very difficult decision because I love to have a goal every day, to be outside, to train and to feel good about it and especially to always try to improve. <\/p>\n“I was waiting for finally one moment where I knew it was enough, and it came. I had a good spring this year, so when that was going well I didn\u2019t feel retirement calling, but I\u2019ve had some nasty crashes in the past two years and after the spring this year I broke my shoulder and in my first race coming back from that, the Baloise Tour, I was involved in a hard crash in the middle of the peloton. <\/p>\n
“At that moment, I realised that I don\u2019t want this anymore. We started the next day in the rain, and I thought \u2018no\u2019, this is not where I feel at home anymore. <\/p>\n
“For me, that was the moment where I knew I was done with racing in the peloton.”<\/p>\n
Van Dijk took time out from the sport in 2023 to give birth to her son, Faas.<\/p>\n
She was back on the saddle within six months and spoke about the influence of her family during the latter stages of her glittering career.<\/p>\n
“Cycling means a lot to me and gave me a lot of great chances in life, and [I’m] very thankful for everything that cycling gave to me. I\u2019m especially thankful to Lidl-Trek. <\/p>\n
“This is my seventh year with the team, the longest time I\u2019ve been with one team, and that\u2019s not for no reason. I really feel at home with this team, and it means a lot to me what this team did for women\u2019s cycling. <\/p>\n
“Trek always believed in women\u2019s cycling and invested a lot in it and has played a big role in making women\u2019s cycling what it is today. <\/p>\n
“I don\u2019t know if I look forward to my retirement. I don\u2019t know yet what I\u2019m going to do, but in general I feel very thankful for everything in my career and I would like to make that message very clear.”<\/p>\n
Stream the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift live on TNT Sports and discovery+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ellen van Dijk has announced her retirement from professional cycling following a 20-year career in the sport. Alongside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,25633,82],"class_list":["post-33832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-ellen-van-dijk","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}