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When the final stage of the Simac Ladies Tour came to a close on Sunday, so too did the career of one of the all-time greats. Retiring on home soil, at a race she won twice, Annemiek van Vleuten ended her time as a pro racer with a monumental 104 victories to her name: fifth on the all-time list.
Among the Dutchwoman’s biggest wins: two road race world titles, two time trial world titles, overall success at the inaugural Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, four Giro Donne titles, two Tours of Flanders, two editions of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and two editions of Strade Bianche.
For years Van Vleuten has been an imposing force in the peloton. After starting out as a rider who specialised in time trials (especially prologues) she later evolved into the best all-round racer in the bunch. For a time she was both the world’s best stage racer and the world’s best one-day Classics racer, all while retaining her formidable time-trialling skills.
It’s fair to say her absence will be felt in the peloton for some time.
As the 40-year-old rides off into a hard-earned retirement, let’s take a moment to look back over her extraordinary, 16-year career in the pro peloton, with photos from Cor Vos and Kristof Ramon. As you’ll see, Van Vleuten has plenty to be proud of.
Van Vleuten’s career started in earnest in 2007. This photo shows her racing for Vrienden van het Platteland at the Holland Ladies Tour (now the Simac Ladies Tour) the following year. Bike tech and accessories have evolved a little in Van Vleuten’s time.Her first pro victory came in 2010 at the Ronde van Drenthe, winning solo ahead of top sprinters Ina-Yoko Teutenberg and Kirsten Wild.The following season, Van Vleuten claimed her first World Cup (now WorldTour) win, at the Tour of Flanders no less.She’d end up winning three World Cups that season: Flanders, the Open de Suède Vårgårda in Sweden, and the GP de Plouay, pictured here. Note the World Cup leader’s jersey Van Vleuten is wearing. She’d win that classification for the first of four times in 2011.In 2012, Van Vleuten’s Nederland bloeit team became the Rabobank Women Team. Van Vleuten and Marianne Vos stayed on with the team.The pair would go 1-2 at the Dutch road race championships that year, with Van Vleuten beating Vos. It was the first and only time in her career she won the Dutch nationals road race.Van Vleuten and Vos would also be part of the Dutch squad for the London Olympics later that year, with Vos taking the gold medal.Van Vleuten with a fan ahead of the 2012 Amstel Curaçao Race, an intriguing event held on the Dutch-controlled island of Curaçao in the Caribbean. Women and men competed in the same race, which was that year won by Niki Terpstra.A rather modest 2013 season only delivered three wins for Van Vleuten, including a stage at the Trophée d’Or Féminin in France.The first of Van Vleuten’s four Dutch ITT titles would come in 2014, beating world champion Ellen van Dijk in the process.She didn’t have to wait long to race in the Dutch colours, starting the Giro d’Italia Femminile prologue in her national champ’s kit.She won that stage ahead of two teammates, Vos and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot – her first of 16 career Giro stage wins.Van Vleuten won a few days later too, claiming stage 3 with a solo victory.Her final race of the 2014 season, the Lotto Belisol Belgium Tour, brought three stage wins from five stages, plus overall success. Among the stage victories were a win in the prologue (pictured here) …… and on stage 1.In 2015, Van Vleuten joined the Bigla team where she won the prologue ITT at Euskal Emakumeen Bira …… and later, the prologue at the Giro d’Italia Femminile.That win in the prologue would earn her a day in pink, but she’d have to wait a few years before winning the race overall.In 2016, after just one season with Bigla, Van Vleuten joined the Australian Orica-AIS team in what was a turning point for her career. It was with Orica that she started to have more opportunities to ride for GC in the biggest races, and her career took off as a result. Here she is riding to another Dutch ITT title.The 2016 Rio Olympics road race was a defining moment in her career. On that day, Van Vleuten proved to be the strongest climber in the bunch – surprising many – and was leading the race solo coming into the closing kilometres. A horrible crash on the following descent, while seemingly on her way to Olympic gold, left her motionless in the gutter with three spinal fractures and a severe concussion.Remarkably, Van Vleuten returned to competition less than a month later, at the Lotto Belgium Tour. Even more remarkably, she won the prologue …… then won stage 3 and claimed the overall victory. (If you’re wondering why she’s racing in the Dutch colours, Orica-AIS didn’t have a team in the race so she raced for the Dutch national team.)Van Vleuten’s mother, Ria, often travelled to see her daughter race. After the horror of seeing Annemiek crash in Rio (“I thought she was dead”, she told the press later), seeing her back to full health, let alone winning, was a huge relief.Van Vleuten started her 2017 season in Australia, winning the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.Another year, another Dutch ITT title. Van Vleuten would share many podiums with Van Dijk and Anna van der Breggen throughout her career.At the 2017 Giro d’Italia Femminile, Van Vleuten won stage 2, and then won the stage 5 ITT (pictured here), setting her up for third overall. She was getting ever closer to that overall victory.The fourth edition of La Course by Le Tour de France finished atop the Col d’Izoard where Van Vleuten won solo by more than 40 seconds. While only the Izoard race was UCI-classified, there was a second part to La Course the following day, in which the top 20 riders from the first day contested a time trial over the same course as the men’s Tour ITT. Van Vleuten won that race as well.At the 2017 Boels Rental Ladies Tour (now Simac Ladies Tour), Van Vleuten won the prologue ITT …… and the stage 3 ITT …… to wrap up overall success for the first time.Speaking of first-time victories, at the 2017 Road Worlds in Bergen, Norway, Van Vleuten rode her way into rainbows.It was the first of her four elite world titles.Van Vleuten got to debut her world champ’s skinsuit at the inaugural women’s Jayco Herald Sun Tour in Australia, in early 2018. She won the ‘epilogue’ – a 1.6 km effort in Melbourne that followed the race’s single road stage.Van Vleuten took to the boards at the Track World Championships in early 2018, winning a silver medal in the individual pursuit behind the USA’s Chloe Dygert.She returned to the Giro in July 2018, winning the stage 7 ITT in the rainbow skinsuit to take the maglia rosa.She won in pink on the mighty Monte Zoncolan on stage 9 …… and again the following day …… to lock in her first-ever overall victory at the Giro Rosa.La Course followed shortly after, where Van Vleuten and Van der Breggen fought it out in an epic finale. Van der Breggen was leading solo until the very last moment, when Van Vleuten reeled her in and won for a second-straight edition.Van Vleuten returned to the Boels Ladies Tour in late August and won the prologue, stage 2 …… and then the stage 6 ITT, to lead the race from start to finish and claim her second (and final) overall victory.At the Innsbruck Worlds in late September, Van Vleuten again won the time trial …… earning another year in rainbows.In the Worlds road race, things didn’t go quite so well. Van Vleuten crashed with 96 km to go, fracturing her knee. Somehow, she managed to chase back to the lead group, attack to set up Van der Breggen’s winning move, and then even managed to finish seventh. Remarkably, it wouldn’t be the last time she put in such a ride while injured at Worlds.Van Vleuten started her 2019 in style, winning Strade Bianche for the first time …… before doing the same at Liège-Bastogne-Liège the following month.She took her fourth and final Dutch ITT title (some familiar faces there) …… then returned to the Giro Rosa as defending champion where she won stage 5 …… then won stage 6 …… and again took out the overall victory.Van Vleuten again won the prologue at the Boels Ladies Tour in early September, but couldn’t replicate her overall success.Perhaps the most remarkable performance of Van Vleuten’s career, though, came in late September 2019 in the Harrogate Worlds road race. Van Vleuten went on the attack with an incredible 105 km remaining in the 149 km race …… and held on to win her first road race world title by more than two minutes.In late 2019, Van Vleuten tried her hand at some cyclocross racing, finishing 36th at the Superprestige Gieten.If 2019 started well, then 2020 started perfectly. She won her first five races of the year, bookended by two WorldTour wins: the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad for the first time (pictured here) …… and a delayed Strade Bianche, five months later.2020 also brought the only European road race title of Van Vleuten’s career, but as world champion she’d have to wait until the end of season to race in the Euro champ’s jersey. Note the elbow-bump here – a sign of a COVID-mired season.The Giro Rosa was delayed by COVID too, and ran in mid September. Van Vleuten won stage 2 and was leading the race all the way through to stage 8 …… where she crashed heavily and broke her wrist. Her chances of racing the Road Worlds the following week seemed to have evaporated.And yet, somehow, Van Vleuten managed to not just start the race, but finish second behind solo teammate Anna van der Breggen.In 2021, Van Vleuten left Mitchelton-Scott and moved to Movistar where she would spend the last three years of her career. She got to race the 2021 Spring Classics in her Euro champ’s jersey where she won Dwars door Vlaanderen …… then backed it up less than a week later at the Tour of Flanders. It was her second and final win at ‘De Ronde’, a full decade after her first.At the COVID-delayed Tokyo Olympics, in July 2021, Van Vleuten thought she’d won the road race. Little did she know that Anna Kiesenhofer was still out front, having powered on solo from the early break. Winning the Tokyo Olympic road race have been the perfect redemption story after Van Vleuten’s horror crash in Rio.She would have to make do with Olympic gold in the time trial three days later.In September 2021, Van Vleuten rode her way to a stage win and overall success at the Ladies Tour of Norway.She then headed to the Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta where she won the stage 2 ITT …… and the stage 3 road stage …… to add another stage race victory to her palmares.Van Vleuten again won Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in early 2022 …… then claimed a second Liège-Bastogne-Liège title to round out a successful spring.After the frustration of crashing out of the Giro Rosa while on her way to overall victory in 2021, Van Vleuten returned in 2022 and won stage 3.She followed that up with a win in pink on stage 7 …… which earned her a third overall title.The 2022 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (the race’s inaugural edition) would be one of the biggest races of Van Vleuten’s illustrious career. After a stomach bug derailed her first few stages, she decimated the field on the first mountain stage, winning the day by almost three and a half minutes.She did similar on the final stage, winning the day in yellow …… to become the first-ever winner of the Tour de France Femmes.Van Vleuten wasn’t done yet, though. Her goal was to win all three ‘Grand Tours’ in a season, and so she headed to the Vuelta. She won stage 2 …… and ended up winning the race overall, as planned.Her 2022 Road Worlds didn’t start according to plan, though. She was well off the pace in the ITT, finishing seventh, and then she crashed dramatically in the mixed relay time trial, fracturing her elbow. Her chances of winning the road race three days later seemed to have disappeared.Somehow, Van Vleuten made it to the startline and then made it deep into the race. And then she bridged across to the lead group with less than a kilometre to go, hit them from behind, got a gap, and held on for a truly remarkable victory.When the rainbow appears at just the right moment.Van Vleuten was as surprised as anyone after taking the win. She said later that it was probably the best win of her career.Van Vleuten would race her final season in the rainbow bands – a fitting end. She looked well off the pace in the 2023 Spring Classics and it wasn’t until the Vuelta Femenina that she took her first win. This image shows her being beaten by Gaia Realini in a two-up sprint on stage 6, but this result put Van Vleuten into the overall lead.On the final stage, Van Vleuten dug deep to minimise her losses to main rival Demi Vollering, and managed to hang on for overall victory.In her final Giro Donne, Van Vleuten attacked solo on the first road stage, taking a lead she’d never relinquish.She won stage 6 too …… and then stage 7 …… to claim her fourth Giro title in her final season.Van Vleuten had hoped to win a second Tour de France Femmes, but it wasn’t to be. On the decisive Col du Tourmalet stage, Van Vleuten was right at the fore, but when Vollering made her move, Van Vleuten was powerless to respond. She ended the Tour in fourth overall.In her final Road Worlds, a late puncture ruined any chances of a repeat win for Van Vleuten. But she seemed content when she crossed the line, waving to the crowd as she finished the day in eighth.In her penultimate stage race, the Tour of Scandinavia, Van Vleuten wasn’t targetting GC. And yet, a runner-up finish on stage 2 and a strong time trial put her into the lead with one day remaining. She managed to hold on to win by two seconds – her 104th and final victory as a professional.Van Vleuten waved goodbye to pro racing at the Simac Ladies Tour this past week. She first took part in this race way back in 2007 – her first season of racing – and she ends her career with six stage wins and two overall victories at the Dutch race.One final interview for Van Vleuten on her final day of racing. Note the earrings she is wearing – they were given to her by her father on her 18th birthday. He died in 2008 after a long battle with illness. Note Van Vleuten’s mother on the left in the background too, supporting her daughter right through to the very end of her remarkable career.
