DUTCH SCORE WINS

Out of the 51 WWT races (including GCs, stages and one-day events) contested by individuals in 2017, 20 were won by Dutch riders, more than the next three nations – USA, Belgium and Australia - combined

“When the federation gave us the opportunity to go to training camps together in winter, we all needed to step up to follow the likes of Marianne Vos or, for example, Loes Gunnewijk before.

The current era of Dutch dominance is about more than having the four strongest riders in the world - there is considerable strength in depth, as well. Kirsten Wild is one of the fastest woman in pure bunch sprints and there are Classics specialists like Chantal Blaak, Lucinda Brand, Janneke Ensing and Amy Pieters. You could name even more, who all have the potential to win big races. “While in other countries they sometimes don’t even fill all their spots, we have trouble selecting the right nine riders for the Worlds,” Van der Breggen explains of the luxury problem facing the Dutch selectors.

Do Dutch trade teams do things differently? Villumsen does not think so and Van der Breggen also finds it hard to tell. With teams like Canyon-SRAM, Wiggle-High5, Cervélo-Bigla and Orica-Scott looking very professional and delivering good performances as well, one could argue that there is no real difference in their approaches. But Italy still struggles to guide its big talents from being junior world champions to becoming strong elite riders, and talents from Australia and the USA struggle with the natural problem of being far away from cycling’s European hub. That’s shown at the elite level as well, when United Healthcare is strong enough to race the best in California, but can’t afford to race in Europe very often.

Of course, money is also a factor. BoelsDolmans and Sunweb, two of the very best teams in the world, both have a comparatively high budget to be able to sign the strongest riders (though these pale into insignificance compared to men’s teams). And Dutch riders come with the benefit of being cheaper to sign. “If we get specific results and don’t have a normal salary, it is possible to get help from the government, and the health insurance is cheaper,” Brand explains. That helps riders to concentrate on cycling, while in Germany or Italy, for example, riders need to get employed by the army or state police and have to follow programmes there to be able to get that governmental help.

Dutch companies also seem to be attracted to the sport, because its media coverage in the Netherlands is more widespread. State broadcaster NOS covers the sport regularly and their reporter Han Kock knows the riders personally. Besides that, race organisers try to have live broadcasts of races like the Healthy Ageing Tour or the Ronde van Drenthe at least on regional channels.

“It’s an upward spiral: You have good riders who push each other to a higher level, then the results come and you get more money for the federation and women’s cycling. So it goes on,” Stam says.

For the moment, the ‘Oranje Vrouwen’ are the strongest in the world. But Van Dijk, Van Vleuten and Vos are all in their 30s already and even though younger riders like Floortje Mackaij, Riejanne Markus, former cyclo-cross world champion Thalita de Jong and her sister Demi, Anouska Koster or Eva Buurman and Jip van den Bos are already waiting to follow in their footsteps, their opponents are getting stronger as well. Danish youngsters are making the most of having a new national coach - Catherine Marsal - as well as the money of the RiisSeier VeloConcept project. With 2016 world champion Amalie Dideriksen and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig, winner of the WWT youth classification, they already have a strong next generation. “You see more pro teams taking responsibilities for training camps. So the role of national federations becomes smaller and more nationalities come in,” Van Vleuten, who rides for the Australian Orica-Scott team, explains.

For women’s cycling it might be good to break the Dutch dominance, but for now the juniors who raced on the last day of the Boels Tour in the Tom Dumoulin Bike Park had three Dutch riders on the podium to look up to: Van Vleuten, Van der Breggen and Van Dijk - numbers one, two and four in the world. Only Vos was missing, in preparation for her worlds bid. Van Dijk foresees that Dutch cycling will continue to be very strong, even if other countries start to match them a few years down the line. “I don’t really know the next Marianne Vos or Anna Van der Breggen,” she says. “But we’ll always be up there as a country.”

The UCI's Women's Junior Nations Cup was dominated by the Dutch this year. It looks like the current run of Dutch supremacy is only laying the foundations for further dominance in the future