THE DUTCH GOLDEN AGE
The top four riders in the UCI's women's World Ranking are all from the Netherlands. Procycling looks at why Dutch riders have risen to such heights, and how the current generation is building momentum, with a strong cohort of youngsters coming through. I
The sun is shining on a warm September morning in the Limburg village of Stramproy. The little church square in the centre of the village, which counts 5,000 inhabitants and sits on the border between the Netherlands and Belgium, is packed with people. Small children on balance bikes, middle-aged cyclists in lycra and grey-haired pensioners with their commuting bikes have all come out to cheer the riders before the hardest day of the Boels Ladies Tour, the last stage race of the UCI Women’s WorldTour season.
Annemiek van Vleuten, who will go on to take the GC win in the newly opened Tom Dumoulin Bike Park in Sittard a day later, has her fan club by the roadside every day, and she had won the prologue in her hometown of Wageningen cheered on by many friends. Old men stood on the finishing straight in Wageningen and went through the start list to find riders who could threaten Van Vleuten’s time.
But the 34-year-old world number one is not the only rider to attract attention. Fans gather around the signing-in stage in Stramproy to collect autographs and photos from Dutch riders as well as from foreign riders like Lisa Brennauer, who was particularly in demand the day before, when she won in Weert. People in Holland know the faces of the women’s peloton much better than anywhere else in the world - even compared with Great Britain where the Women’s Tour draws thousands of roadside fans. It’s easy to stand in the square in Stramproy, look around and conclude that this is possibly the epicentre of women’s cycling.
Riders from the Netherlands have been at the top of the sport for years, even though riders like Lizzie Deignan and Megan Guarnier have ensured that they don’t have a monopoly. However, in 2017, Dutch riders have been the ones to beat as never before. The best four riders in the UCI’s World Ranking – Van Vleuten, Anna van der Breggen, Marianne Vos and Ellen van Dijk – would all ride in the ‘oranje trui’ at the Bergen world championships (after we went to press), and the Dutch lead the nations’ ranking with more than double the points of second-placed USA. Between them, Van Vleuten and Van der Breggen won the Amstel-Flèche-Liège triple, the Giro, the Tour of California and La Course by Le Tour.
“Cycling is more of a women’s sport here than in other countries,” Van der Breggen says. “When you look to Spain, for example, it’s still not normal to be a pro rider as a woman. It’s more popular in Holland and with our results it gets more and more so. Then more girls start to ride their bike.”
Cycling was not always the go-to sport for girls at school in the Netherlands, Van Dijk explains: “But you see a lot of girls on the bike, so it’s developing.” Van Dijk, the 2013 world time trial champion, is one of many Dutch professionals who changed from speed skating (see box), which is still more popular among children, to cycling. “The infrastructure here is better to start riding at a young age and keep doing it,” she says. “Kids learn to ride at the age of three and ride to school every day.”
NUMBER OF DUTCH RIDERS RANKED IN THE WORLD’S TOP 100
Of course, the cycling-centric road infrastructure also helps with this.
Riders from other countries look on enviously. Linda Villumsen is a Danish-raised New Zealander who has been in the sport more than a decade and raced for the Dutch AA Drink team in 2011. “They have a lot of people on bikes,” she laughs. “The fact that in the last five years more and more women can live from the sport... that all started in Holland,” she continues. “There have always been a lot of trade teams in Holland and they can develop talented riders.” The sport is also well supported on an administrative level. Women’s teams abide by the same regulations as men’s Continental teams, which means they have to take a licence in the country from which most of their riders come. If a Dutch company sponsors a team and wants it to be a Dutch team, the team has to take more Dutch riders on board than from anywhere else. So even when Lizzie Deignan, Megan Guarnier and Evelyn Stevens were the most successful riders on the dominant Boels-- Dolmans squad in 2015 and 2016, team manager Danny Stam had at least three Dutch riders in his ten-to-twelve rider roster who could learn from the best.
Stam praises the federation. “We have a really strong generation, so we look at who coached them in their junior years. People like former national coach Johan Lammerts, who always looked after them and did training camps in winter already at junior and U23 level. I think there are not many countries that do this,” the 45-year-old explains and adds: “The race organisers do a good job as well.”