‘Another year that the dream is a little bit crushed’ – Demi Vollering misses out at World Championships, but praises Dutch team

Not even finishing on the podium of the World Championships may be seen as a disappointment for the Netherlands, the nation who were once a wholly dominant force in women’s cycling. But on Saturday, the team were pleased with their performance all the same.

Dutch riders finished in fifth and seventh in the women’s road race through Riejanne Markus and Demi Vollering respectively, one of only a small number of teams to put a rider up the road in a race where the late break held off the tactically-stalling favourites.

“As a team we worked really well together this year and the communication was really good with all of us, so I’m really proud of that,” Demi Vollering told Eurosport post-race.

The Netherlands have often felt the pressure to take control of World Championships road races, or struggled with the complexities of having multiple leaders, but on Saturday they were able to slot into a much more balanced race, that featured strong teams from Italy, France, Switzerland and more.

“This year it was not us as only one favourite for the race, this year you saw in the end there were multiple countries in a really strong group,” Vollering said.

“Switzerland was in the end with the most riders in the front, I think, so it was not only up to us this year, and I think that also made it a bit easier for us.”

Despite the positives, and lack of need for a serious post-mortem as the Netherlands have had to do in previous years, Vollering was naturally still disappointed at not taking a medal in a race which suited her abilities.

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“Of course I came for more,” she said. “You always need to dream about it and that’s always what I’m doing. Another year that the dream is a little bit crushed for me, but we will keep trying for the next years.”

Though Vollering didn’t rush to say she wasn’t feeling good in the race, she did admit she vomited at one point, after struggling with stomach issues in the week. Former world champion Anna van der Breggen also faded earlier than expected.

“I wasn’t ill, it was bad legs,” Van der Breggen told the Dutch press. “I’ve had that happen more often lately: good and bad days alternating. Today was a bad day.”

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However, the Dutch team seemed to make the best of a bad situation, and did not have many other complaints at the finish line.

Whilst riders like Kim Le Court-Pienaar blasted the tactics in the favourite group as “stupid”, saying the main contenders marked themselves out of a chance to win, Vollering was not entirely surprised by the outcome, also echoing Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney’s comments about the tough conditions in Kigali.

“I think this is something we see a bit more often in women’s cycling, that it’s not always the favourites who win,” she said.

“And I think also it’s interesting conditions here. I think everyone had at the same moment the feeling that they were done, and I think that’s also mainly because of the conditions.

“They are so hard that lap after after lap, these laps slowly creep into you, and I think you see everybody very clearly on the same moment feeling like ‘OK, I need to be really careful with what I’m doing’.”

Looking like she was struggling on some of the climbs, Vollering can be pleased with sprinting to seventh after holding onto the favourites group, and the Netherlands can still celebrate fifth – a better result than France and Italy.

For Markus in particular, it was a career-best result in the World Championships road race, and a successful day after being a relatively late call-up to the Dutch team.

“I’m proud of my final, because I haven’t been feeling completely fit the last few days. But I knew it would be a mental game, and such a tough race suits me,” she said to Sporza.

As for whether the game-playing in the favourites group helped the breakaway riders to survive, Markus was quick to rebut any notion that the leaders stayed away based only on that.

“That’s a warped view,” she said. “They went all in, and this is what they got.”

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