As she enters her twentieth season as a pro and starts the hunt for win number 256 of her career, you could be forgiven for thinking that Marianne Vos might be getting a little tired of life on the road and all the massive demands professional cycling makes on a person.
Furthermore, Vos now has multiple World Championships and Giro d'Italia wins, an Olympic gold, and a seemingly endless succession of Monument titles and Grand Tour stage victories already to her name – and that's just to mention the highest of the highlights. So perhaps the sense of having achieved almost everything the sport can offer might well be getting a shade overwhelming too.
Well, think again. As Vos readied for her 2025 road debut at the recent Visma-Lease a Bike training camp last month in Spain, she insisted that when her season gets underway – which it finally does this weekend at the Trofeo Alfredo Binda – despite the familiarity of it all, she'll be anticipating the familiar sensation of butterflies in the stomach, too.
