Losing the 2025 Tour to Ferrand-Prévot was almost too much for Vollering: 'I didn't enjoy it anymore'

Demi Vollering won the Tour de France Femmes for the second time thanks to a spectacular final stretch. She made her move in the penultimate stage, then sealed the deal while wearing the yellow jersey. But it didn’t come easily—not in this edition of the Tour, nor the year before. She had serious doubts about her future as a cyclist.

Vollering had already won the Tour de France Femmes in 2023, but she came close again in 2024: she finished four seconds behind Kasia Niewiadoma. In 2025, she had to concede defeat to Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, but in this edition, she was clearly the strongest. However, things went terribly wrong on Mont Ventoux at first. In an interview with The Athletic, the sports division of The New York Times, she talks about the queen stage.

"My only hope was to win on Mont Ventoux, and that was the one thing I didn't manage to do. Of course, I was very disappointed, especially because I think we all pretty much took it for granted that we'd be wearing the yellow jersey after that stage. For me, that was the beginning of it all, and it would have felt like a complete story, but it just didn’t work out. It was as if a dream had come crashing down.”

She was extremely disappointed that she had lost so much time on a mountain where she had fallen in love with cycling, but she quickly shifted her mindset. “On the way back to the bus, I checked VeloViewer for the next day,” she says. “I’d already set a record there in January, so I knew this was a very tough climb. I immediately started planning the perfect attack in my head.”

That’s where she decided the Tour. On the eighth stage, FDJ-SUEZ set the pace on a small climb, after which the Dutch leader accelerated on a short but extremely steep stretch of road. She pulled away and knocked Niewiadoma out of the yellow jersey. But earlier in the Tour, Vollering had taken a fall. It turned out that this had affected her more than was initially apparent.

"My left knee hurt quite a bit after the crash," she says. "It was very swollen and hurt terribly. Fortunately, I only felt pain during the first two or three stages. And during the last two stages, it didn’t bother me anymore, but I definitely felt the effects after the rides.”

The Tour victory was sweet revenge for the two previous editions. The 2025 edition, in particular, took a huge toll on the Dutch rider, as she openly admits. Vollering was the top favorite, but was completely outclassed on the climbs by a rock-solid Ferrand-Prévot. Moreover, the FDJ-SUEZ team leader didn’t reach the level she had hoped to achieve. Both physically and mentally, she was completely spent for a moment.

"Last year, I really overdid it," she explains. "At one point, I was completely done with it. I had pushed my body way too far, and mentally, maybe a little too far beyond my limits as well. After last year’s Tour de France, I even considered taking a year off because I wasn’t enjoying it at all anymore.” And that could have been disastrous.

And so she decided to set herself a sort of ultimatum. She set out in the RV and took some time to relax there. “I had decided to only go cycling if I felt like it. After the camping trip, we went for some walks, and—since I’d been offline for a while—I felt like getting back on my bike again. I just rode without any goals or expectations. I just felt free.”