'I thought I went too early' - Vollering wins Worlds the hard way to seal Triple Crown

Demi Vollering looked to be cruising towards the World Championships after she attacked with intent on the Voie Camillien-Houde with 38km alone, but her relationship with this race has always been a vexed one. Perhaps it was only to be expected that she wouldn’t claim the rainbow bands the easy way.

The Dutchwoman was forced to start again when she was caught by Kasia Niewiadoma (Poland) and Elisa Longo Borghini (Italy) with 15km to go. But after reeling in an attack from Longo Borghini and then withstanding Niewiadoma’s onslaught on the final climb, Vollering outsprinted the Pole to add the Worlds to her extensive palmarès.

“I think I can still not believe it,” Vollering said. “I truly believe that I had this dream in my head for a reason.”

The Dutch squad is routinely the strongest at the World Championships, but it hasn’t always added up to the sum of its parts on Vollering’s watch, most notably in Zurich two years ago. In Montreal, however, Laurens ten Dam’s squad was built squarely around Vollering, with Puck Pieterse setting up her searing attack with a shade under three laps to go.

“I worked so hard towards this goal, and it takes guts to truly believe in it with your whole heart and to gather a team around you with such strong girls who all sacrifice for you," Vollering said. 

“I mean, they maybe also have a chance, but they all go for it, only for you. It’s a lot to ask from them, but I’m so proud of everybody from the team. They did the whole race, we took it in hand, and they rode the whole race in the front and then Puck did an amazing lead out and I couldn’t just not finish the job, you know?”

Even so, Vollering worried that she had struck out too soon. Although she initially opened what had looked like a winning margin over the rest, she was never able to disappear from sight, and she was reeled in towards the end of a tumultuous penultimate lap.

“Oh yeah, there were so many moments I thought I went too early,” Vollering said. “It stayed so close the whole time and I didn’t dare to turn around and look back because I was like, ‘I feel like they’re almost in my wheel already.’ And then it was 20 seconds, 22, 15… 

“At one point they came back, and I was like, ‘Oh shit,’ but it’s still not over. I have to believe in it, like to my little toe. And I just dared and then tried again, and I never gave up to the finish line.”

In a repeat of the Tour de France Femmes finale, Vollering found herself in a head-to-head contest with Niewiadoma. After resisting the Pole on Avenue Pagnuelo, Vollering overpowered her in the uphill dash to the line to secure a Triple Crown of Giro, Tour and Worlds.

“I was not planning to give it away anymore from that moment,” Vollering said. “I was like, ‘Nope, now it’s mine.’”