Demi Vollering: “It’s a real shame you only saw only the final 50 km”

Vollering admitted she was left with “mixed feelings” after the Gold Race. “I turned out to have good legs, but I could no longer make the difference. Still, I am satisfied with the way we took the initiative as a team. Nobody saw that, but we spent a lot of time riding on the front and doing damage.”

A little later, she went into that in more detail. “It is a real, real shame that you only saw the final 50 kilometres, because from the start we rode very strongly and dominantly as a team. Before we reached the local lap, we rode every climb full gas. So it is a real pity, for everyone, that this was not visible.”

“Amber and Eva rode very hard there, and Franzi also showed herself in that phase. That was also why we did not have that many riders left in the final,” said Vollering, who therefore no longer had the Paris-Roubaix winner alongside her by then.

“That was because the goal was to make it hard, so we could eliminate riders like Lorena Wiebes before the final. Amstel is tough, but not that tough. So we still had a large peloton, even though we were riding so hard.”

What was visible was that the peloton containing the favourites allowed Blasi to ride away. “SD Worx were going one after the other, and at a certain point we decided to let Nienke Vinke go, because there was still quite a long way to go. Blasi jumped across at the perfect moment. She immediately opened up a nice gap, and we were actually hoping she would blow herself up, but she simply turned out to be very strong.”

“We gambled a bit, but we also no longer had the team to really take control,” the Dutch rider continued. “I could not immediately go after her myself either, because I could not use all my bullets before the Cauberg. It is a shame, but you also cannot jump after everything. We chose to let one rider go, and that turned out to be the wrong one.”

So what will Vollering and FDJ-SUEZ take with them towards Huy and Liège? “Maybe next time we need to save a little bit of energy at the start. I could already feel it coming a little, because we were so motivated to make it a hard race. At one point I thought: ahhh, maybe we started riding too early. But anyway, that was the plan, and sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. Wednesday and Sunday are different races again.”