'We need to be perfect in every detail' – Demi Vollering aims for Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift and Giro d'Italia Women double
Dutchwoman will make a bid for both Grand Tours
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Demi Vollering is to target both the Giro d’Italia Women and the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift in 2026 this season, it was revealed on Thursday.
The Dutch FDJ United-SUEZ rider, winner of the Tour in 2023, and runner-up in the past two editions, announced her different run-in to the French Grand Tour this summer.
Vollering will begin her season at Omloop Nieuwsblad on Saturday, before racing the Classics, before heading to the Giro at the start of May. The 29-year-old will then race the Tour de Suisse before the Tour in August. It means no Vuelta España Femenina, where she has won the last two editions, for the first time since 2021.
Vollering has raced the Giro just twice before, in 2019, when she finished 13th overall while racing for Parkhotel Valkenburg, and in 2021 when she finished third, riding for SD Worx. Just one woman has ever completed the Giro-Tour double, Annemiek van Vleuten, in 2022.
“We need to be in good form,” Vollering said of the Tour. “Fresh physically and mentally, and we need to be there at the start line with the thought that we can do it - and I really believe that we can do it.”
The addition of the time trial to the parcours has bolstered the confidence of the French team, with both Elise Chabbey and Vollering excited by the prospect of training for the discipline.
“The course suits us really well, we have the TT and it’s also a harder course,” Chabbey said. “We did a recon from Nice and it’s hard until the end, so we need to be perfect in every detail - and together.”
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This year, the change in schedule for the Giro, moving from May to July, has allowed a longer training window before the Tour, meaning Vollering will be on the start line for both.
“The main difference is that my summer is a little different," Vollering explained. "There’s not a whole Spanish block in there and also one more altitude before the Giro, so I have more structured big training blocks to prepare myself for other races.”
This year, she has already won two stages of the Setmana Ciclista Volta Femenina de la Comunitat Valenciana.
In the lead-up to the Tour last year, Vollering had 29 race days on her schedule. This year, her calendar is purposefully thinner, and tailored to prioritise focussed training blocks before her biggest races.
Vollering's next appearance will be at Omloop this weekend, a race she is yet to win, although she has finished on the podium twice.
“Omloop - it’s a very nice race and I'm always looking forward to seeing how I am and how my form is at the moment," she said.
“It would be great to have it on my palmarès but if not, I'm sure it will happen somewhere in the future.”
Meg is a news writer for Cycling Weekly. In her time around cycling, Meg is a podcast producer and lover of anything that gets her outside, and moving.
From the Welsh-English borderlands, Meg's first taste of cycling was downhill - she's now learning to love the up, and swapping her full-sus for gravel (for the most part!).
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