Vollering Vanquishes All in Women’s Tour of Flanders

Demi Vollering was a class above her rivals in the women’s Tour of Flanders on Saturday, dropping a breakaway of very strong riders on the Oude Kwaremont and riding the final 19km alone.

The FDJ-United Suez rider blew the doors off Tour de France Femmes winner Pauline Ferrand Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike), Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Premier Tech), defending champion Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) and others, riding them off her wheel and then putting in a stomping solo ride to the finish.

Ferrand Prévot and Pieterse joined forces in chasing but clearly didn’t have the same oomph as Vollering, who sat low, long and aero on her bike and powered the pedals around to reach the line well clear.

Pieterse lead out the sprint for second but had nothing left when Ferrand Prévot came past. They were 42 seconds behind while Kopecky won the sprint for fourth just ahead of Zoe Bäckstedt (Canyon-SRAM-Zondacrypto), a further 22 seconds adrift.

“It is crazy,” Vollering said of her emotions at the win. “I lost my words a bit. It was super hard, I just only thought I need to go as fast as possible and then the suffering is finally over because it was painful.”

She said that she mentally rehearsed her winning move multiple times beforehand.

“I have dreamed that moment already so many times last night,” she smiled. “I knew that the Kwaremont is the longest effort so that most suits me, and also the most in the end so that everyone will feel the fatigue already.

“I knew that I just had to push without looking behind and that is what I did. I just pushed full gas until I finally turned off the cobbles. Then I realised, f*ck, I am alone.”

She was, she had enough strength to drive on to the line alone, and she took the third monument win of her career.

‘The strongest woman won today’

What was a 164km race was illuminated early on by an eight rider breakaway. One of the pre-race favorites, Marlen Reusser (Movistar Team) forced a group clear on the Molenberg with about 70km to go, being joined by Vollering, Bäckstedt, Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek), Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime), Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) and others, but things came back together. Reusser and Kim Le Court (AG Insurance Soudal) were caught up in a crash before the Koppenberg, with that climb seeing Vollering’s teammate Franzi Koch hammer the pace and temporarily reduced the lead group to a handful of riders.

She also turned the screw on the Oude Kruisberg, with all these efforts helping soften up the bunch before Vollering’s race-winning surge on the Oude Kwaremont.

Pieterse was stronger than Ferrand-Prévot on the climbs but the duo came back together with 12km to go and fended off a five-woman chase group behind which was led home by Kopecky.

“I think we have to admit that the strongest woman won today,” the former world champion said. “A super strong FDJ team we saw. I think we managed well until Oude Kwaremont and then I had no answer to this attack.

“I hoped we could come back for a podium place too but unfortunately we didn’t come any closer to Puck and Pauline so it was a sprint for place 4.”

‘You need to give it everything’

The Kopecky group also didn’t get any closer to Vollering, who was on a really strong day.

It is her fifth victory of the year thus far and she is gaining more and more momentum.

That’s important, particularly as she pointed out that mental attitude is so important to success.

“It is all in the head. You need to really believe in it and you need to give everything,” she said. “Everything starts with a dream and then you need to work very, very hard for it.

“You need to get people and partners around you. We have the best equipment to push to our very, very limits here on Specialized bikes. In the end it all happens here.

“Today it is not only Easter, it is also international calm day. So that was something I wanted to keep in my mind, to try to be calm in the storm.”