Whereas Anna van der Breggen’s return to racing out of retirement with SD Worx-Protime will begin in 2025, the previous two-time highway race world champion is already testing the course for subsequent yr’s Worlds in Rwanda.
The Dutch star revealed she would come again to racing in June after ending her illustrious profession again in September 2021 on the Worlds in Leuven, nonetheless, she’s getting a head begin with an early recon journey to the epicentre of Kigali 2025.
Van der Breggen confirmed off on her Instagram that she was within the Rwandan capital metropolis, which can see biking’s World Championships head to Africa for the primary time in its 103-year historical past.
She’s with the Dutch biking federation alongside males’s nationwide coach Koos Moerenhout and the technical director of the KNWU, Wilbert Broekhuizen, with newly-appointed girls’s coach Laurens ten Dam not current on the journey.
Ladies’s biking has seen nice growth with new races such because the Tour de France Femmes and Paris-Roubaix Femmes being added to the calendar since Van der Breggen stopped racing and started her profession as a sports activities director at SD Worx. Nevertheless, it is not simply the massive occasions which have introduced the Dutch star again however the camaraderie.
“It is the racing normally that is made me need to come again. I wish to race and I additionally love the Giro the place all the pieces is completely different and, sure, the Tour [de France Femmes] is making girls’s biking develop rather a lot so I actually like that and you’ll see yearly is completely different once more however that is not what made me need to come again to biking,” Van der Breggen instructed Cyclingnews again in August on the Tour.
“It is extra what I see right here additionally between teammates and the way a lot they do for one another. That feeling that you just actually need to give all the pieces for one another and attempt to win, and the way they sit within the bus after they do not win, that feeling is extra essential for me.”
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There aren’t any indicators of her ultra-competitive spirit disappearing within the time she’s been out of racing, although, together with her preliminary announcement confirming that she could be aiming so as to add to her 62 profession victories as soon as again within the peloton.
“Do I nonetheless need to be a winner? After all, I really feel competitors in me,” she mentioned. “I all the time need to win. Nevertheless, that does not imply you all the time can win. That is nice too as a result of that solely makes the victories you’ve got extra stunning,” Van der Breggen mentioned.
“When you need to battle to get someplace, it simply makes the rewards later extra stunning. In any case, for me, it’s a privilege to be a bicycle owner once more quickly in 2025.”
Amongst her stacked palmarès, Van der Breggen gained three elite world titles – the highway race at Innsbruck in 2018 and each the highway race and time trial at Imola in 2020. She additionally triumphed on the Olympic Video games highway race in Rio 2016, gained 4 general Giro Donnes, took seven wins at La Flèche Wallonne and gained a number of different of the highest one-day races – the Tour of Flanders, Strade Bianche, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and Amstel Gold Race amongst them.
Her extremely anticipated return arrives similtaneously Pauline Ferrand-Prevot’s after ending her mountain bike profession, with the man former highway world champion set to experience for Visma-Lease a Bike within the new yr.
All of it comes as a part of an enormous shakeup in girls’s biking, with Van der Breggen’s former protégé and the very best climber within the girls’s peloton, Demi Vollering, additionally transferring on from SD Worx-Protime to FDJ-Suez.
Vollering spoke final week in a telling interview with NRC.nl in regards to the tensions between her and Van der Breggen throughout her latter months on the Dutch squad, with the previous being shocked and a “bit annoyed and indignant” in regards to the announcement.
Van der Breggen had been Vollering’s coach and guided her to be one of many high riders within the peloton as a Tour de France Femmes champion and Ardennes triple winner, one thing solely Van der Breggen had achieved in girls’s biking. Subsequent season, they face off as rivals, however will Van der Breggen be capable to rediscover her type of previous?
