There is racing on home soil in the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, and then there’s racing the most iconic race in cycling on home roads. For Demi Vollering, the first stage of the Tour de France Femmes included some very familiar landscapes, and roads she was familiar with long before her shift into professional cycling.
Born in Pijnacker, just to the southeast of the stage 1 finish in The Hague, Vollering is truly racing on home roads for this Grand Depart of the Tour de France Femmes. She could be seen on the front near the end of the first stage, leading the peloton for her teammate Lorena Wiebes to try and sprint to victory.
The first three stages are not for Vollering – both the first and second stages are for the sprinters and while the Dutchwoman will likely finish high in the stage 3 time trial, a win is probably just out of reach. Vollering’s stages will come later in the race when the mountains loom, but the start in Rotterdam is a special one for the defending champion.
In between speed skating and dabbling in road racing, Vollering earned an official degree in Floral Design, to continue her father and uncle’s family business. When working for the nursery, Vollering would ride her bike out to the greenhouses to ask if they would supply flowers for school projects. In that time she got to know the farmers quite well. On Monday she rode her bike near those greenhouses again, although this time she wasn’t asking for free flowers to practice her styling.
“It’s really funny to be again in that area,” Vollering said before the start of stage 1. “It feels like a different lifetime that it was me as a student asking for flowers from the farmers and now it’s me as a cyclist coming through that area. It makes me really proud.”
Vollering’s meteoric rise to the top of the sport came when she left the flower industry behind, but even young Vollering couldn’t have dreamt of racing the Tour de France Femmes on the roads she used to ride to collect flowers, especially as the favourite to win the race a week after the Rotterdam stages.
Of course, Vollering is not the only rider with the luxury of racing the Tour at home. Dordrecht, where stage 2 began, is the birthplace of former cyclocross world champion Lucinda Brand, for example.
The French riders may be grumbling about the start in the Netherlands, but the Dutch riders are revelling in the experience of racing for yellow at home, and the Dutch fans couldn’t be happier.
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