'I'm a winner, there are always things to improve' – Demi Vollering already looking ahead to 2026 goals

BUSTO ARSIZIO, ITALY - OCTOBER 07: Demi Vollering of Netherlands and Team FDJ - SUEZ prior to the 5th Tre Valli Varesine Women's Race 2025 a 137km one day race from Busto Arsizio to Varese on October 07, 2025 in Busto Arsizio, Italy. (Photo by Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Vollering ends the season as European champion (Image credit: Getty Images)

The curtain may have only just fallen on a notably successful 2025 season for Demi Vollering, but the Dutch star says she is already looking ahead to a new series of challenges in 2026, amongst them the Tour de France Femmes, one of the few major goals of the year she was unable to conquer.

Vollering rounded out her debut season with FDJ-Suez with a memorable win in the European Championships road race, prior to taking second in her last event of the year, the Tre Valli Varesine in Italy. But with wins also coming earlier in 2025 in the Volta de la Comunitat Valenciana, Strade Bianche, the Vuelta España Femenina and Itzulia Women, there was certainly plenty for the 28-year-old to celebrate over the last nine months of racing.

Nobody's season goes 100% to plan and losing the Tour de France Femmes to Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) was one of the main setbacks. The World Championships road race where the Dutch and other major teams underestimated the strength of the earlier breaks and Vollering ended up seventh was another time when things definitely didn't go to plan.

But as Vollering told L'Équipe in an interview earlier this week, those defeats will simply serve as motivation for next year's big goals.

This year the racing dynamic was notably impacted by the considerable number of transfers during the off-season, including Vollering's to FDJ, as well as the return of Pauline Ferrand-Prévot to road racing.

"Any strong rider, no matter who they are, pushes me to improve," she told L'Équipe, "So that's automatically a good thing."

She concluded the interview by paying tribute to one of her youngest teammates, Frenchwoman Célia Gery, who took a notable victory in the U23 Worlds road race in Kigali.

Alasdair Fotheringham

Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The IndependentThe GuardianProCycling, The Express and Reuters.

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