Grand Tour treble again in the plans of Annemiek van Vleuten for final year as a pro

Annemiek van Vleuten will retire at the end of next season, and she wants to ride all the grand tours before she hangs up the bike.

"I definitely want to ride the Giro and Tour again next year," Van Vleuten told El Pelotón. "I'm already talking about that with my team and my coach." Van Vleuten has already won all three grand tours this season and became the World Champion in September.

Van Vleuten has already planned her schedule for the next season. "It will be a full block, from Flanders to the Vuelta and then a block with the Giro and the Tour." There is not much that Van Vleuten hasn’t won during her career. One thing that is missing from the list of her achievements is a UCI World Hour record, but she denied any interest in taking it on before she hangs up her racing wheels for good.

“It’s something I’ve been talking about for a long time with my coach and my team. But I so much prefer training and competing outdoors to doing it in a velodrome that it is not something for me,” she said.

"That requires such specific preparation that it interferes with my goals on the road. So I'm not going to try it. Besides, Ellen van Dijk has set the bar so high this year that it will be extremely difficult to improve the record," Van Vleuten concluded.