Demi Vollering sat in front of the international press with all smiles and an air of confidence as she answered questions about her yellow-jersey defence at the upcoming Tour de France Femmes that begins on Monday on home soil in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
She said that while she feels stronger than last year, she will wait until the race hits the mountains before making any predictions about her chances of winning two overall titles in a row on the finale stage 8 atop Alpe d'Huez.
"I feel good. I'm excited and I told the girls this morning, 'I'm too hyped, I need to relax'. It's special for me. All of my friends, family, and close ones are excited to get it started, so I'm very motivated," Vollering said.
She arrived in Rotterdam after competing at the Olympic Games in Paris, where she finished 5th in the individual time trial and 34th in the road race after supporting her compatriot Marianne Vos to the silver medal.
She has not competed in a stage race since winning the Tour de Suisse in June, the most recent of a stage-race-winning streak that also included securing overall titles at the Tour de Romandie, La Vuelta Femenina, Itzulia Women, and Vuelta a Burgos.
"I don't know if I'm stronger than last year. I think, for sure, a bit. But we need to see that in the race because it's been quite some time since I did long climbs, for example, so I need to see how it goes in the last part of the Tour," she said.
The third edition of the Tour de France Femmes will host eight stages over seven days between August 12 and August 18. The race is set to start in the Netherlands, travel south into Liège, Belgium, and then into France, finishing atop the fabled Alpe d'Huez.
For some riders, it's been a jam-packed summer schedule that has taken the professional women's peloton across the Giro d'Italia, the Paris Olympic Games and the Tour de France Femmes. Vollering opted to skip the Giro and instead focussed on altitude training in her camper van, also visiting key points of the Tour de France course ahead of her main goals at the Olympics and Tour.
"I did a good altitude camp for three weeks before the Olympics, and then we had the Olympics, so it was a little bit different than I normally have; normally, I would focus only on the Tour and have a big training block for the Tour, but now we had the Olympics in between, and that made it a little bit different," Vollering said.
"We had two weeks [ahead of the Olympics] to rest before the time trial and the road race, so it was a bit like, 'how do I do that best?' because you want to rest but also want to train hard in between. I hope I have good legs this week."
She felt that the peloton could be stronger at the Tour de France Femmes than it was at the Olympic Games, mainly because the Games had smaller field sizes with riders competing for their national teams, and not all riders competed in both events.
"That is how it feels. You feel that everyone is excited to come to the Tour de France and everyone is focussed on it. A lot of girls were at altitude camp before and everyone is trying to be on their best in this period, also to take the Olympics with it," she said.
"But there are not so many girls here on the start line for GC, for example, who also did the Olympics. A lot, but not all. It will be interesting to see if this will influence the form for some riders in this Tour."
Still, she named a few of her main rivals in the general classification: Juliette Labous (dsm-firmenich PostNL), Kasia Niewiadoma and Neve Bradbury (Canyon-SRAM), Évita Muzic (FDJ-SUEZ), and Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek) that she and SD Worx-Protime teammates will keep a close eye on when the race heads toward the mountains.
Part of her altitude and pre-Tour de France training included riding up Alpe d'Huez, which she said she did three times as part of Alpe d'HuZes, an event hosted by the Netherlands to raise money in the fight against cancer.
"It was special. The first time I did it was two or three days before the event that we called Alpe d'HuZes. It's a big event in Holland to raise money for cancer charities. It's a special feeling because all the people come there with a story. They all go up the mountain for family members of loved ones they lost due to cancer. A special feeling was in the air, and I will have this in my thoughts when racing up there," Vollering said.
As for the start in Rotterdam, the site of the first three stages, Vollering revealed that it is a special place with memories of her previous career as a florist, speaking with local farmers and greenhouses, all before she signed a professional contract to race bikes in 2019.
"All my family and friends will be there. I also grew up next to the greenhouses with the flowers. Tomorrow we will see [the greenhouses and flowers] a lot because we come through this part of Holland where they have a lot of greenhouses for either flowers or vegetables," Vollering said.
"A few years ago, when I was still a flower student, I came to the greenhouses. I know a lot of them because I would ask if they wanted to sponsor us for school projects and stuff like that.
"It's funny to be here in this way again in this area. It feels like a different lifetime; me as a student asking farmers for flowers and me as a cyclist coming through this area; it makes me proud."
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