Dutch need new harmony to beat Ferrand-Prévot at Rwanda Worlds

The Netherlands have won five of the last eight elite women’s road races at the World Championships, but that dominance has been waning in recent editions. In Zurich last year, there was no Dutch rider on the podium for the first time in a decade. The strength in depth is still there, of course, it’s just that cohesion has been sorely lacking. 

It’s hard to not see echoes of the star-studded Italian men’s team that so laboured during their decade-long rainbow jersey hiatus between 1992 and 2002. Each year, the imposing squadra azzurra would dictate the terms of engagement in the Worlds road race before their grandees would tread on one another’s toes in the finale and squander a winning hand, finding nothing but another winter of polemica at the end of the rainbow.

The strikingly disjointed Dutch performance at last year’s rain-soaked Worlds in Zurich wasn’t as obviously controversial as the Italian men’s self-immolating showing in Lisbon in 2001, for instance, but it marked a line in the sand all the same.

In Italy, the late Franco Ballerini was persuaded to dispense with the idea of fielding multiple leaders at the Worlds, enacting the so-called ‘Spirito di Zolder’ around Mario Cipollini the following year. In the Netherlands, there has been a changing of the guard. Loes Gunnewijk stepped down after a mixed spell as national coach and the federation opted for a left-field appointment, with Laurens ten Dam handed the role.

Ten Dam had clearly impressed in his handling of the Dutch squads at last year’s Gravel World Championships, where Marianne Vos and Mathieu van der Poel carried off the titles. Even so, the laissez-faire ‘spirit of gravel’ is one thing; drilling a high-quality team of contenders for a road race Worlds is something else altogether.

Annemiek van Vleuten was reportedly the first choice, but she turned down the role, leaving the door open for Ten Dam’s surprising appointment. He has a wealth of experience on the road from his own career, of course, but perhaps his greatest attribute was his lack of connections with the women’s peloton, thus offering a clean slate for a team with a tendency to break into factions.

Their display in the rain of Zurich last year was a dissonant one. On the final lap, Demi Vollering found herself hemmed in by the presence of Marianne Vos and Riejanne Markus in the break. But when they were reeled in, Vollering’s forcing proceeded to see Vos – her team’s fastest finisher – jettisoned out the back, and Lotte Kopecky gratefully scooped up her second world title in a row.

“I think sometimes the Dutch can work very well together, and I think sometimes they don't," silver medallist Chloe Dygert said that afternoon. “I think their biggest strengths are also their biggest weaknesses. I think everybody on that team wants to win and that sometimes causes everybody to lose.”

In Rwanda, everybody in the Dutch team might want to win, but two stand out with realistic chances on a course with 3,350m of total climbing: Vollering, who is still chasing her first world title, and Anna van der Breggen, who is chasing a hat-trick after wins in Innsbruck in 2018 and Imola in 2020.

In Vos' absence, they will be backed by Femke de Vries, Shirin van Anrooij, Pauliena Rooijakkers and Yara Kastelijn. Ten Dam’s task will be to ensure his team are singing from the same hymn sheet – and he might hope, too, that the sheer difficulty of the Kigali course will ultimately help establish the hierarchy between Vollering and Van der Breggen.

“Everyone starts from scratch. Before you go to Rwanda, you know what your role will be. You have to agree to that,” Ten Dam told Sporza before travelling to Kigali. “I looked at all possible tactics and the team roles that go with them. We discussed that with the riders, and they said ‘yes’ to their specific roles.”

Winning the World Championships is never simply a question of ironing out internecine strife at the best of times, and there is a formidable new obstacle in the way of the Dutch challenge this year. Or rather, a returning obstacle.

Eleven years ago in Ponferrada, a young Pauline Ferrand-Prévot delivered a perfect sprint to claim the rainbow jersey in a race where Vos, then in her pomp, had set out as the prohibitive favourite.

Ferrand-Prévot was the rising star of the road scene, but her talent could never be contained to one discipline. Or perhaps women’s cycling was not yet at the economic point where Ferrand-Prévot could focus on the road and merely dabble in off-road racing in the manner of a Van der Poel or a Pidcock.

By the turn of the decade, Ferrand-Prévot had switched her attention squarely to off-road racing. Ineos, remarkably, passed up on the opportunity to build a road team around the Frenchwoman when she raced in their colours in 2023 and 2024, and it looked as though she had been lost to the discipline altogether. 

After landing mountain bike gold at the Paris 2024 Olympics, however, Ferrand-Prévot signalled another reinvention. She signed a three-year deal with Visma | Lease a Bike and set herself the ambition of winning the Tour de France Femmes before that contract expired.

Ferrand-Prévot is well ahead of schedule. She claimed a dominant victory at the Tour in August, capping overall victory by winning the final two stages in the Alps. She would beat the pre-race favourite Vollering by 3:42 and the nature of her Tour triumph persuaded her to reverse her previous decision and race the Rwanda Worlds.

After arriving in Kigali this week, Ferrand-Prévot admitted that the course is “punchier” than she had anticipated, though the length and difficulty of the race will surely make it a test of endurance. “I’m quite surprised by the circuit, but in a good way, because it’s something I like,” she told L’Équipe. “I think it suits me quite well.”

Then again, every race suits Ferrand-Prévot’s 2025 vintage. She won Paris-Roubaix in April after all, and she is now on the cusp of a remarkable hat-trick of the biggest prizes on the road calendar. 

“I haven’t had the same optimal preparation as for the Tour de France, but nevertheless, I still did the job right to the end, and I’m in good shape here,” she said. “We’ll see if it works out.”

Ferrand-Prévot has been vocal about the strength of her French squad, and with good reason. Évita Muzic, Juliette Labous, Cédrine Kerbaol and Maeva Squiban all feature, and the latter three warmed up for the road race with a fine silver medal in the mixed relay. Like their Dutch counterparts, the French line up with considerable depth, but they also have a very clear leader. 

The onus will be on Ten Dam and his team to match that cohesion.