Demi Vollering has broken her silence on the tensions at SD Worx-Protime this past season and revealed that she suffered a tailbone fracture in the crash that subsequently saw her lose the Tour de France Femmes.
In a telling interview with Dutch newspaper NRC.nl, Vollering also opened up about her changing relationship with world champion teammate Lotte Kopecky and the tumultuous season she had.
The superstar pair have clashed previously, at Strade Bianche in 2023. But with Kopecky's contract being extended as SD Worx's leader and Vollering's departure contrastingly being announced messily before she even knew it, it's fair to say the dynamic between them, and Vollering's dynamic with team management were soured.
"Very different from last year," is how Vollering described her and Kopecky's new relationship. "I think she [Kopecky] tried to avoid me a bit, she was more focused on herself. I can understand that, with all the expectations they have of her in Belgium. But she was very focused on next year when I'm not there anymore.
"The whole season, when I raced with Lotte, we raced with two plans. A plan for Lotte, a plan for Demi."
In Siena last season, Vollering came out on top. She won again in a hard-fought two-up sprint on stage two of the Tour de Romandie this September, however, Kopecky would win overall. Things had boiled over at this point and the pair stopped speaking.
It was a sign of things to come and perhaps foreshadows the type of battles they will have when racing as rivals for the first time since 2021 next season.
"I tried that all season, but I noticed that the communication was only one-sided. In Romandie we avoided each other a bit," said Vollering. "Then I thought: now it's just over."
Kopecky is even thinking about riding for yellow at the Tour next year, a target that would put her directly up against her former teammate that she finished runner-up to in 2023.
But Vollering didn't think anything like this would happen a year ago, telling NRC that while she believed a new contract extension would be signed, she felt SD Worx were “searching”. She saw "no real plan to take a step further" after her unprecedented Ardennes triple and Tour de France Femmes-winning season.
"They just wanted to do it again like the year before. But when I wanted to talk to the team management about it, they were not open to it," Vollering explained. "I was literally told: 'What do you mean, is it not good enough here?'"
After discussions dried up, Danny Stam then told the media that she would be leaving the team at Dwars door Vlaanderen. Vollering described it as "like a slap in the face.", with a further team statement revealing details of a failed negotiation during the one-day race.
"I hadn't made a choice yet and was still hoping that the team would make adjustments," she said.
Further tensions with management have also arisen over the return of Anna van der Breggen from retirement to race with SD Worx-Protime in 2025. Not only was Vollering only made aware of it two hours prior to the announcement but she also wasn't surprised, given her history with the team's internal communication.
"I saw it on social media. Later it turned out that the team management had sent an internal email two hours beforehand, I had missed that," she said.
"It's quite characteristic of the team, communication is not always the strongest point. Nobody knew this was coming, not even the soigneurs and mechanics."
Van der Breggen had been Vollering's coach and likely knows her better than anyone on the team. That partnership ended quickly after the announcement of the former's return.
"I was also a bit frustrated and angry about that. On the other hand, I know how Anna is, I don't think she ever thought about that," Vollering said.
"At the National Championships, we talked about it briefly. I said: you know everything about me. Then she said: you know everything about me in principle. How I train you is also how I'm going to train myself. And of course, that's true.
"After the Tour de France I started with my new coaches at FDJ and I removed Anna from my Trainings-Peaks," she concluded, with her first training camp alongside her new team arriving soon in December.
Fighting for Tour victory with a broken tailbone
Vollering will ride for FDJ-Suez in 2025 after a landmark transfer and will want to put the drama and discontent of her final season at the Dutch squad behind her. For now, though, some of the events are still quite raw, especially that dramatic Tour.
"At first I had no feeling in my left leg at all. My bike was lying on the ground next to me but it took me a minute to bend over and pick it up," recalled Vollering of the crash on stage 5 at the Tour that lost her yellow and 1:53 to eventual-winner Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM).
"At first I thought: I broke my hip. My shorts were also wet so I thought I was bleeding."
Once the dust had settled on Vollering going down hard, getting left by her teammates and Niewiadoma riding herself into the yellow jersey, SD Worx-Protime released a statement that she would likely race on with three stages left.
"She suffered minor bruising and superficial abrasions to her lower back and buttock," said the team. "Considering how fast I fell, I'm glad I didn't suffer any broken bones," concurred Vollering, when in actual fact, she had broken her coccyx.
"I also understood why I had those wet pants. If you have a fracture in your tailbone, the doctor told me, you often have to urinate spontaneously," revealed Vollering.
What followed was three days of painful chasing to try and bring back Niewiadoma that ultimately ended in a loss by just four seconds at the Top of Alpe d'Huez - the narrowest winning margin in Tour de France history, men's or women's.
"When we got to the foot of Alpe d'Huez, I thought: oh, now we have to do that whole climb. I was in so much pain. The whole climb I was only thinking: I have to get up here at all. It was such a terrible struggle," Vollering explained.
"5km before the top I already heard in my ear that I didn't have enough of a lead on Kasia to win the Tour. From then on I thought: okay, I can't leave anything behind, even though I'm completely exhausting myself.
"When I crossed the finish line, I already knew: either I win by one second, or I lose by a few seconds. I was sitting there on the asphalt, saw the clock running. Then Kasia appeared in the distance around the corner and I knew: it's not enough."
While she lived out a "very difficult" immediate few days following losing the Tour despite triumphing up Alpe d'Huez, Vollering seems at peace now ahead of the new season and with another crack at winning her second maillot jaune coming in July.
"Those first two or three nights I did lie awake thinking about those four seconds - which I could have gotten back afterwards," she said.
"After that, I was able to put it into perspective. That it was actually a very nice story, those four seconds. And that this year was simply not meant for me."
What she perhaps hasn't got over yet is how she raced at the World Championships in her adopted home country of Switzerland, where she, as favourite, and a very strong Dutch team were bested by Kopecky and ultimately ended off the podium. They received widespread criticism for their race tactics that lacked harmony and Vollering appearing selfish.
"I did exactly everything wrong that I could do wrong. I wanted to win so badly," she admitted. "It was in my own country. And the Tour had not worked out, so I was all in on the World Championships. As a result, in the final, when it mattered, I made the wrong decisions.
"I felt incredibly guilty and ashamed of how I had raced. That's why the shitload of negative reactions hit me extra hard. Of course, people didn't know that, so they thought they had to kick me a little harder."
That Dutch team now has a new coach in Laurens Ten Dam, which alongside her move to FDJ-Suez, could see Vollering return to her world-beating best from 2023. In any case, she'll be more comfortable and likely freed up after the tense past few months at SD Worx-Protime.
