While Anna van der Breggen's return to racing out of retirement with SD Worx-Protime will start in 2025, the former two-time road race world champion is already checking out the course for next year's Worlds in Rwanda.
The Dutch star revealed she would come back to racing in June after finishing her illustrious career back in September 2021 at the Worlds in Leuven, however, she's getting a head start with an early recon trip to the epicentre of Kigali 2025.
Van der Breggen showed off on her Instagram that she was in the Rwandan capital city, which will see cycling's World Championships head to Africa for the first time in its 103-year history.
She's with the Dutch cycling federation alongside men's national coach Koos Moerenhout and the technical director of the KNWU, Wilbert Broekhuizen, with newly-appointed women's coach Laurens ten Dam not present on the trip.
Women's cycling has seen great development with new races such as the Tour de France Femmes and Paris-Roubaix Femmes being added to the calendar since Van der Breggen stopped racing and began her career as a sports director at SD Worx. However, it's not just the big events that have brought the Dutch star back but the camaraderie.
"It's the racing in general that's made me want to come back. I like to race and I also love the Giro where everything is different and, yes, the Tour [de France Femmes] is making women's cycling grow a lot so I really like that and you can see every year is different again but that's not what made me want to come back to cycling," Van der Breggen told Cyclingnews back in August at the Tour.
"It's more what I see here also between teammates and how much they do for each other. That feeling that you really want to give everything for each other and try to win, and how they sit in the bus when they don't win, that feeling is more important for me."
There are no signs of her ultra-competitive spirit disappearing in the time she's been out of racing, though, with her initial announcement confirming that she would be aiming to add to her 62 career victories once back in the peloton.
"Do I still want to be a winner? Of course, I feel competition in me," she said. "I always want to win. However, that doesn't mean you always can win. That's fine too because that only makes the victories you have more beautiful," Van der Breggen said.
"When you have to struggle to get somewhere, it just makes the rewards later more beautiful. In any case, for me, it is a privilege to be a cyclist again soon in 2025."
Among her stacked palmarès, Van der Breggen won three elite world titles – the road race at Innsbruck in 2018 and both the road race and time trial at Imola in 2020. She also triumphed at the Olympic Games road race in Rio 2016, won four overall Giro Donnes, took seven wins at La Flèche Wallonne and won several other of the top one-day races – the Tour of Flanders, Strade Bianche, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and Amstel Gold Race among them.
Her highly anticipated return arrives at the same time as Pauline Ferrand-Prevot's after ending her mountain bike career, with the fellow former road world champion set to ride for Visma-Lease a Bike in the new year.
It all comes as part of a huge shakeup in women's cycling, with Van der Breggen's former protégé and the best climber in the women's peloton, Demi Vollering, also moving on from SD Worx-Protime to FDJ-Suez.
Vollering spoke last week in a telling interview with NRC.nl about the tensions between her and Van der Breggen during her latter months at the Dutch squad, with the former being surprised and a "bit frustrated and angry" about the announcement.
Van der Breggen had been Vollering's coach and guided her to be one of the top riders in the peloton as a Tour de France Femmes champion and Ardennes triple winner, something only Van der Breggen had done in women's cycling. Next season, they face off as rivals, but will Van der Breggen be able to rediscover her form of old?
