Demi Vollering is ready for the Tour de France Femmes. After two second places and one overall victory, the Dutch rider from FDJ-Suez 'just really wants to win her second one.' There are no longer any feelings of revenge after her second place in 2024—just four seconds behind Katarzyna Niewiadoma.
"No, I don’t think about revenge anymore. Ultimately, I just want to win a second Tour and give it my all. It’s not about setting anything right. I just want to wear the yellow on the last day. I can draw strength from my second place last year. I've never suffered so much as then, with a broken back. If I suffer this year, I can think: it can always be worse," she says, relaxed.
This year, Vollering might face the strongest competition yet. She already struggled with Marlen Reusser this year in the Tour de Suisse, but this time the Swiss rider is sick. Although the FDJ rider isn’t sure if she should believe that. "To start with, of course I take Marlen into consideration. But there are so many others I could name now. Lotte Kopecky, Anna van der Breggen, Kasia Niewiadoma, Elisa Longo Borghini, Pauliena Rooijakkers... There are so many, we’ll see," she continues.
"Well, if you look at the Giro, you see how smart Longo Borghini is and how strong Sarah Gigante races. And I haven’t even mentioned Kim Le Court yet, who really is a rider that can deliver on what she says. And Puck, of course, although she said she’s not racing for the GC, but she’s someone I can never rule out. I just need to focus on myself. Ultimately, you want nothing more than to go home in yellow, and I’m super excited to fight for the yellow here with a French team. I’m very happy with my form."
"With women, it’s more on the razor’s edge"
Finally, Vollering is asked about Tadej Pogacar’s crash in the Tour de France, after which the group of favorites waited for the top contender. How different was that in the Tour Femmes last year, when the peloton kept racing after Vollering’s crash? Does the Dutch top favorite hope to see the same behavior from the men’s Tour also reflected in the women’s Tour this week?
"Uhm, ultimately I don’t really expect different behavior. I found it interesting to see that the men did wait. Sometimes I have the feeling that with the women, there’s much more racing with the knife between the teeth, because the stage races are much shorter. That means there’s less waiting for each other. I’ve actually never seen that in our peloton."
"But I’m not going to say one is better than the other," she concludes. "I don’t expect women to wait for me if I’m on the ground, but yes, I found it very respectful and positive to see the men waiting for Pogacar."
