INTERNATIONAL RIDER
A masterclass in the art of bicycle racing earns the Dutchwoman this year’s spoils
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Annemiek van Vleuten’s record-breaking year was her age, turning 40 in her last race. Or perhaps it was the fact that she won a breadth of different races: cobbled, lumpy Classics, sprints, mountainous, and stage races.
Or perhaps it was the apparent ease in which she claimed, arguably, the sport’s greatest ever single season result haul; Kasia Niewiadoma remarking that, “Annemiek is beyond our capacity.”
Whatever the answer is, no one could refute Niewiadoma’s words, and nor could they argue that van Vleuten didn’t repeatedly prove that age doesn’t stunt progression, but accelerates it. “I’m 39 years old, so for me it’s possible to train so many hours, but that’s not suddenly: that’s a process of many years doing five or 10% more, and that makes my engine really big and that makes my fitness level really high,” she said at the inaugural Tour de France Femmes.
In 40 race days in 2022, she took 13 victories, including stages and the GC in the Tour, Giro and Vuelta. There were also wins at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and, at the end of a phenomenal campaign, in the road race at the World Championships.
The latter wasn’t really a surprise result, until it was. Three days before, she had fractured her elbow, and just appearing on the start line was a shock. “I had set myself 100% to be a servant for Marianne [Vos],” she said.
But then, in the final kilometre with a bunch sprint beckoning, the injured helper audaciously attacked and spectacularly held on. “It was hell,” she described of her winning move. “I couldn’t get out of the saddle so I had to do everything seated and my legs were exploding on the climb.”
Staggering consistency
She displayed such staggering consistency from February to October that a harsher critic might describe it as a robotic, autopilot level of performance. But that would do a disservice to the issues she had to confront – overcoming adversity had become a pattern.
Before the Worlds injury, there was a serious stomach infection at the Tour that almost forced her to withdraw after just two days of racing. She didn’t eat, drink and even had to pull over on the third stage to take a nature break. “The last thing I was thinking about was racing,” she moaned, as she ceded over a minute. But then she felt “a hundred thousand times better” and sparked into devastating form. Casting an eye back to first seeing stage seven of the Tour parcours, she remembered thinking: “That looked brutal. And brutal is really good for me.”
It was predatory talk; no scraps for the prey. On the penultimate climb of said stage, she attacked and
