Profile - Demi Vollering
- Nationality: Dutch
- Born: 15 November 1996 in Pijnacker (NED)
- Place of residence: Therwil near Basel (SUI)
- Height: 1.72 metres
- Marital status: engaged to Jan de Voogd
- Profession learnt: Florist
- Professional since 2019
Teams
- 2018 Swaboladies.nl
- 2019-2020 Parkhotel Valkenburg
- since 2021 SD Worx
Important successes
- 2019: Giro dell'Emilia, Third Liège-Bastogne-Liège
- 2020: Third Fleche Wallonne and La Course by Le Tour
- 2021: Liège-Bastogne-Liège, La Course by Le Tour, Women's Tour, Second Amstel Gold Race, Third Giro d'Italia, Third European Championship Mixed Relay
- 2022: Tour of the Basque Country, Second Tour de France Femmes and Amstel Gold Race
Other about Demi Vollering
Demi's youngest sister Bodine (18) also races and is considered a great talent. Siblings Nena (21) and Jake (24) no longer cycle.
Interview with Demi Vollering
The interview was conducted by Felix Mattis
TOUR: Do you remember: when we spoke for the first time in Liège on 28 April 2019, you had tears in your eyes ...
Demi Vollering: (laughs) Oh, yes. That was terrible!
TOUR: It was actually pretty good: you stood on the podium at Liège-Bastogne-Liège as a new pro. What do you remember?
Full ring: It was a surprise. But I knew that I could do well because the race suits me. I inspected the course beforehand, rode all the climbs at the limit and set a few Strava records in the process. Everything came together in the race. It was cold and wet and all I said to myself from the start was: hang in there, hang in there, hang in there! I knew that I would sprint well if I stuck with it. And then I won the sprint for third place in the chasing group. That was a wow moment!
TOUR: And that overwhelmed you on the podium?
Full ring: Not only that. My grandfather had died a few months earlier. I thought of him during the national anthem. He was a very proud man, I looked up to him as a child. When I won a small trophy, he always celebrated me and said I was the best and that I got it from him. It all burst out of me because I could feel how proud that would have made him. I am very close to my family and often think about how proud I make them after a good race.
TOUR: You were 22 years old back then in Liège. You were hardly known. You had never previously been part of the Dutch national team in the junior classes. Why was that?
Full ring: I had never thought that I would be able to ride for the national team. When I was a junior, there were so many strong girls. I wasn't bad, but I wasn't really good either - always in the top 20, top 30. I always rode flat out, attacked a lot, but hardly achieved any results. I just enjoyed racing. Funnily enough, my first contact with the federation was when they asked me in 2019 if I wanted to race the home European Championships in Alkmaar.
TOUR: When did you start racing?
Full ring: When I was nine or ten, I rode fat tyre races, and at 14 or 15 I joined a small club. We went for long rides on Sundays and ate apple pie. I didn't really start racing until I was 16. But it actually all started much earlier.
TOUR: When exactly did it start?
Full ring: I learned to ride a bike very early on, at the age of two, and whizzed around the playground at the end of our street with the neighbour's children. They were older than me - that motivated me early on to take off my training wheels. Unfortunately, there wasn't a bike small enough for me back then until my grandma found a tiny bike at a flea market. I have many fond memories of my childhood on a bike.
TOUR: And why did it take you until you were 16 to start racing?
Full ring: I always wanted to, but I couldn't. I have three younger siblings, my father has a nursery and grows flowers. He couldn't go far away with us at the weekend - and it was also difficult for my mum alone with so many children. The ice rink in The Hague, half an hour's drive from us, was easier to get to. You also need less expensive equipment for speed skating. That's an issue with four children. Speed skating also satisfied my desire to race.
TOUR: How did the switch to cycling come about?
Full ring: In the end, my friend got me into it. Jan was a cyclist himself and recognised that I had talent. I was super bad on the ice in the winter of 2017/18, couldn't beat my own best performances and was really frustrated. He said I should stop and focus fully on cycling. I replied: 'I'm having fun skating! I was part of the regional squad and thought I could go far. But as things got worse and worse, that became unrealistic.
TOUR: In 2018, your good results in cycling paved the way to a professional contract with Team Parkhotel Valkenburg. The huge leap in performance followed in 2019. Why does switching to bigger teams make such a difference?
Full ring: Firstly, I was still primarily working as a florist in 2018 and wasn't able to fully concentrate on cycling. And then the Parkhotel team simply has a very good environment. We did a training camp in the winter, we had a very good sports director in Raymond Rol and a mental coach in Marieke van Wanroij, who we spoke to twice a week. All these things help us to improve. And now at SD Worx it's even better - especially because I have super-experienced team-mates from whom I learn a lot. About cycling, but also about nutrition, for example.
TOUR: You live in Switzerland with your fiancé Jan. How did that come about? For Germans, moving to Switzerland always sounds like "Tax evasion"...
Full ring: (laughs) No! When we met, when I was 20, he told me that he wanted to live and work in Switzerland for a year or two because he loves the mountains so much. When we had been together for a year, he first moved to Lucerne and then here to Therwil.
TOUR: And when did you move to Switzerland together?
Full ring: I've always spent a lot of time with him, but I only officially moved in with him this year. It was just logical. We are now engaged. We used to go on family holidays to campsites in the Netherlands or Belgium. That's how I learnt to love being outdoors. When I visited Jan in Lucerne for the first time, I immediately fell in love with the mountains - I can even ski now. We often go on ski tours.
I enjoy camping! The less stuff you have around you, the better you can relax.
TOUR: Speaking of camping: even after the final stage of the Tour de France, you didn't go to a fancy hotel, but to your parents' campsite.
Full ring: I enjoy that. I like it when you don't have so much stuff around you. The less you have, the better you can relax! Jan and I now have our own camper van and took it to the Vosges Mountains at the beginning of May, for example, to see the Tour mountain stages. We often go on weekend trips to the mountains in our campervan to go cycling or hiking. And in winter, we now also want to combine this with ski tours. Camping gives you so much freedom! And I perhaps need this freedom more than others. I can work very, very hard - especially towards the Tour de France, I really lived for this goal. But I also need time out. For me, relaxing doesn't mean that I don't do anything, but that I can be out in the mountains.
TOUR: You won your first classic in Liège in 2021. But you've also won the Women's Tour in Great Britain, finished second in the Tour de France and third in the Giro d'Italia. Where do you want to develop - as a classics specialist or a classics rider?
Full ring: Our stage races are getting bigger and bigger. I think that would be the obvious direction of development for me. But I also don't want to lose my punch for the one-day races. At the moment, it all fits together well. I'm still climbing well.
TOUR: One rider has always climbed a little better: Annemiek van Vleuten. She wants to retire at the end of 2023. Is it particularly important for you to beat her before then, or are you simply waiting until the track is clear?
Full ring: I'm not just going to wait and see, no. I would really love to beat her. Because if I don't manage it before she stops, everyone will say: Okay, she couldn't beat her, she's only winning now because Annemiek is gone. I want to show that she can be beaten! That really motivates me a lot. She's pushing the whole women's cycling sport to a new level at the moment. I have to train even harder because of Annemiek.
TOUR: So were you disappointed when van Vleuten announced her retirement because you now only have one year left to beat her?
Full ring: I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, it certainly opens more doors to victory for me. But at the same time, I want to show that I can beat them - and I don't know if I'll be able to do that next year. This year (2022, editor's note) she has continued to improve. If she manages to do that again next year, I would have to take a huge step. And that's only possible up to a certain point.
TOUR: If you want to beat van Vleuten in the Tour, you have to be faster on long mountains. Is that why you focus on climbing in winter?
Full ring: I'm already working a lot on that. In any case, I have to get better on the long mountains to beat them in the tours. Longer training sessions and higher, longer efforts play an important role. But in the end, I have to improve my VO2max performance - and if I do that for two-minute efforts, I automatically do it for longer ones as well.
TOUR: When you joined SD Worx in 2021, you were supposed to follow in the footsteps of Anna van der Breggen. You rode together for a year, and in 2022 she was your sporting director. Who did you learn more from - the racer van der Breggen or the sporting director?
Full ring: I had a special connection with Anna during the race. We didn't have to talk much. It also helped me to have her as a guide. I was able to ride with her in training, so I knew that I could also do it in the race. At the 2021 Giro, we wanted to outsprint Marta Cavalli on the climbs and kept pushing each other. That's how we beat Marta. I miss that now. Nevertheless, I'm learning a lot from her - she now makes my training plans and has slightly different views to my previous coach. That's very interesting for me.
TOUR: Ten years ago, Anna van der Breggen was seen as the next star of women's cycling - and she more than lived up to expectations. Now people have been saying the same thing about you for around two years. Can Anna help you deal with this pressure?
Full ring: I'd rather talk to Chantal about that (van den Broek-Blaak, editor's note). Because Anna now wants to beat Annemiek with me. So some of the pressure also comes from Anna. What's more, Chantal had an outside view of Anna. She saw how Anna dealt with it and now sees how I do it. And then she says to me: 'Demi, when Anna was your age, she couldn't win this or that race either. That's very helpful.
TOUR: So you feel this pressure?
Full ring: Yes, also from Danny (Stam, team manager at SD Worx, editor's note). But that's not a bad thing. He and Anna want me to develop as well as possible. And of course they are sometimes hard on me, for example saying: 'If you had done that, you could have won! But the pressure also comes from myself. For example, I really wanted to win the Fleche Wallonne this year to continue Anna's streak of seven wins in a row. Then I came third and the first thing I did at the finish was to say 'sorry' to Anna. I was so disappointed that I couldn't continue her streak. But she started laughing and asked what I was apologising to her for?
TOUR: You experienced the first setbacks in your career in 2022: you had to miss the European Championships due to a concussion, and you had to cancel the World Championships the day before the road race because you had contracted the coronavirus. How do you cope with things like that?
Full ring: Pretty good. Sure, I had to cry a bit when I watched the World Championship race in Australia on TV and the group of favourites was exactly the kind of group I would have been in. But after the race I said to myself: OK, now it's time to move on again! I can quickly tick off the negatives.
TOUR: Where do you see your weaknesses?
Full ring: Tactically, I'm not particularly strong yet. I've been riding with the pros for four years now - that's not short, but I'm not super experienced either.
TOUR: Do you work specifically on this - for example by studying videos of the races?
Full ring: Anna and Danny tell me that I need to watch more races. I do, but not enough. I often don't watch my own races again because I know what I did wrong and don't want to watch it again (laughs). I'm also sometimes too focussed on my team-mates. I like to see them win and therefore sometimes take a step back.
TOUR: Do you have the necessary attitude to lead the team and be responsible for the results?
Full ring: Sometimes I'm still a bit too nice and timid. Jan says that too. But at the same time, I hate saying that. Because I don't want to be the boss. I want to lead my team in a positive way and earn respect. I think to myself: if my team mates really like me, then they'll bring more out of themselves for me.
TOUR: But it's not a bad quality to be nice, is it?
Full ring: Exactly. But in racing you sometimes have to be a bit tougher. I still find that a bit difficult.
