Inside the mind games between Demi Vollering and Anna van der Breggen: 'She means this deadly seriously'

Demi Vollering (FDJ-SUEZ) managed to claim the Giro d'Italia Women earlier this month. She did so after a duel with Anna van der Breggen, who used to coach her at her former team SD Worx. On triathlete Jan Frodeno's Frodeno Going Mental podcast, Vollering explains how that shared history is now resurfacing in races.

Vollering played a clever hand of poker on the Giro's final stage, using Antonia Niedermaier to pile the pressure on Van der Breggen. "At the time I said: 'I'll happily settle for second or third place, it doesn't matter to me at all. It's up to you now.' That's what I said to Anna, for context," she explains to Frodeno, a former Olympic champion and world-record holder in triathlon.

"She's my former teammate, but also my former coach. She knows me — and certainly my physiology and where I've come from — better than anyone. So a statement like that is either the ultimate bluff or pure self-confidence," Vollering says.

"It was a bit of both, of course. At first she didn't really start riding, because she was thinking: 'Yeah, right, I don't believe Demi.' But at a certain point she did start to ride. I think that's when she realised: 'Oh dear, she means this deadly seriously.'"

As rider and coach, Vollering and Van der Breggen naturally knew everything about one another. "It's sometimes really interesting because we know each other so well. I know Anna very well too, of course; I know how she trained and how she used to train me," says Vollering, who therefore also benefits from knowing Van der Breggen so well.

"It's fascinating. I learned so much from her; she was the one who sat behind me in the team car for years, coaching me. It's really very strange to be battling each other like this again, but that's exactly what makes it even more interesting. She brings out the best in me, because I have to keep improving in order to beat her. Otherwise it simply isn't possible, precisely because she knows me so inside out."

Vollering gives one example of how she has managed to put her former team on the wrong track. "For instance, I know what they say to Anna over the radio when we're on a climb and they see me riding like that — you know, mouth wide open and a contorted face. Then they'll definitely shout over the radio: 'Come on Anna, Demi's about to crack, so don't give up!'"

"I know exactly how it goes, because they simply know me so well from my former team. So yes, they really do know when I'm in trouble," says Vollering. "But sometimes I also think: 'If I pull that kind of face on purpose, then they'll be sure I'm at my limit.' So sometimes I try to think the opposite, just to play with them a little. Because you can play the game the other way around too."

In doing so, Vollering is more or less applying the tactic Lance Armstrong used on stage 17 of the 2004 Tour de France. That year, the American faked feeling unwell, which prompted his T-Mobile rivals to start riding on the front for Jan Ullrich. On the final climb to Le Grand-Bornand, Armstrong then blew the whole field apart, going on to win his sixth Tour shortly afterwards.