Annemiek van Vleuten has over 100 wins at the highest level and this includes Grand Tours, World and Olympic titles, and much more. Hence it becomes difficult for her to pick which was the best of her career, but she reveals it.
"The Wollongong victory says a lot about my character. It's accepting that you have a broken elbow. Trying to make the best out of it. Re-watching it, it's like, the last kilometer of Wollongong still gives me goosebumps," van Vleuten said in an interview with Cyclingnews. She discussed the most important victories of her career. Naturally, a hard selection coming from someone with such palmarès. However the Tour de France Femmes, 2019 Yorkshire World Championships, and last but not least the 2022 World Championships in Wollongong made the Top3.
In that week, after a season where she won such an immense amount of races, she crashed in the mixed time-trial and fractured her elbow. It looked like the end of the ambition she had to become World Champion but not quite. Whilst she didn't have the power to make the difference uphill later that week in the Wollongong circuit, she took an opportunity in the final kilometer and was not followed, ending up taking the title under unexpected circumstances.
"I can really feel the emotions of that whole week, of disappointment, and it's maybe the whole of my career summarized into one week. It came all of that together. I think maybe this is the best victory in my whole career," she explained. This victory saw her take on the rainbow stripes which she carried in her final year as a pro rider in 2023.
