"That rivalry makes women's cycling beautiful" - Experts share excitement for Demi Vollering vs Lotte Kopecky & Anna van der Breggen in 2025
Cycling
The 2025 women's World Tour season has become one of the most highly anticipated in a long time. A big reason for this is the blockbuster transfer of Demi Vollering from Team SD Worx - Protime to FDJ - Suez and the subsequent verbal sparring in the press between the Dutch star and her former teammates.
In Vollering's absence, Team SD Worx - Protime have turned to world champion Lotte Kopecky and returning legend Anna van der Breggen to lead the fight against their former star. In the opinion of ex-pro turned Sporza expert Ine Beyen, the rivalry of Vollering vs Kopecky & Van der Breggen is one that could define women's cycling for the foreseeable future.
"Kopecky is doing things completely differently this year," Beyen notes to Sporza, examining Kopecky's delayed start to the season, designed to hopefully peak for the 2025 Tour de France Femmes. "It's not that she's completely retraining as a climber. She's just focusing on it a bit more now. Although I think her choices are daring. A few weeks ago she did not participate in the Volta Femenina de la Comunitat Valenciana, while the competition was already there."
In Spain, Vollering and Van der Breggen did go to battle though. According to Beyen's Sporza colleague Ruben van Gucht, the choice to Kopecky to avoid an immediate battle was a wise one. "If Kopecky had started there and gotten a slap on the wrist, the papers would have been full again," he counters. "While she might not have been in optimal shape, which she didn't want either."
As mentioned though, at the Tour de France Femmes later this year, Kopecky won't be SD Worx only potential challenger to Vollering. "A woman like Anna van der Breggen doesn't come back to play servant. And there's nothing wrong with that. If you're good enough to win, then you're allowed to," says Van Gucht. "But I do think that it is better for Kopecky and the pressure on her if you can start the Tour with an equal leader. That is better than having to solve everything on your own."
And the underlying tension between Vollering and her former teammates only serves to make the battle all the more interesting. "I would still like to have a conversation with someone from the team who can share information from behind the scenes," Van Gucht comments. "They themselves have always denied that there was anything wrong. The contact was pleasant. Maybe that is the case and we are making it bigger, but I would like to know."
"After the divorce, there have been some jabs in the press," adds Beyen in conclusion. "They can now say more about what was on their minds at the time and that rivalry makes women's cycling beautiful."
Read also
Just in
Play for FREE! Fantasy Tour of Flanders
Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter today!
Popular news
Latest comments
- Tadej has a little more chance. It will be an exciting race and the most important thing is that no one gets hurt.
maria2024202405-04-2025 - Whatever happens tomorrow... it'll be a hell of a raceslappers6605-04-2025
- Exactly Tadej, the cancer of modern society. Full of good-for-nothing people who gain visibility and importance on social media mocking, humiliating (and worse things) to earn money. But it's the follower's fault, no followers, no "influencers".maria2024202405-04-2025
- Great commentCaralladas05-04-2025
- i’m such a sucker for those group-hug, happy ending moments between competitors, largely because it’s so WASN’T that way in my younger, stronger days. (on that note, i have this hope that somewhere down the road, maybe fifteen or twenty years, a middle aged wout and mathieu will go for a pleasure ride together in flanders, and reminisce about the days when they were the young, strong monsters that stalked the cobbles.)OCexile05-04-2025
- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025
- I disagree. If you have lower weight, you will bounce more at the same speed, meaning that you will spend more time in the air and shorter time on the ground, as a consequence, when you are on the ground you have to produce more force for the same speedvappaxbipmv04-04-2025