‘I still have the memories, but they will not be refreshed with new experiences. That will maybe be hard to deal with’
Annemiek van Vleuten might write a book about her career one day, but perhaps the events would be better captured in a comic strip or a Netflix drama. The Dutch rider was, after all, the mistress of explosive all-action heroics. Her first Road Race World Championships title, in Harrogate in 2019, was the result of an outrageous, era-defining 105km solo breakaway, which she later dubbed ‘crazy’. In 2021 she buried the ghosts of her horror crash at Rio 2016 (‘I thought she was dead,’ recalled her teammate Anna van der Breggen) to claim gold in the Tokyo Olympics time-trial, somehow finishing nearly a full minute clear of her rivals on a short 22.1km course.
In 2022 she won the inaugural eight-day Tour de France Femmes, despite spending a day vomiting through illness, with her victory powered by a daring 60km lone attack in the Vosges mountains. Months later she endured the ‘hell’ of riding 164.3km with a broken elbow, before unleashing a shock late surge to win the Road Race World Championships in Wollongong, Australia.
‘Cycling has given me a nice podium to inspire people, to entertain people,’ reflects Van Vleuten, who retired in the autumn of 2023 aged 41, having won pretty much everything there is to win. ‘I still have the memories, but they will not be
