Demi Vollering Starts Year with Dominant Win

Vollering is already looking good

As it is for the men, the Tour is the sport’s crown jewel and, knowing how ambitious Vollering is, she will want revenge this year. So it’s probably wise to keep an eye on her performances in the long run-up to the Tour (which kicks off on August 1) to see how her mission to win the race for a second time (she won in 2023) is progressing.

So far, so good, judging by her dominant 2026 debut in the Setmana Ciclista Volta Femenina de la Comunitat Valenciana (the Valenciana for short). If she wanted to make a statement in the four-stage race (which was reduced to three due to weather), she did. She won stage 1, a punchy 113 km route starting and ending in the town of Gandia, with a 19 km solo victory that mimicked the way she had won the same course last year.

She took off on the toughest and last climb of the stage, the Alto de Barx (6 km @ 4.7%), eventually shook off Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon–SRAM zondacrypto) and won going away; her margin over the peloton led by Maëva Squiban (UAE Team ADQ) was 52 seconds. Last year, her margin over second-place Marlen Reusser (Movistar) was 29 seconds.

Vollering also did herself one better this year by winning two of the stages, outsprinting a small bunch, which included Squiban and Liane Lippert (Movistar), at the end of stage 4 and taking her final GC advantage over runner-up Squiban to 1:02 (compared to 34 seconds last year). Is that a statement win? Maybe. In any case, it’s not bad at all for a season debut, especially considering the fact that after Saturday’s stage 3 was cancelled due to high winds, Vollering won two out of the three races and had a winning margin of over 1 minute in the final GC.

And her opposition wasn’t exactly cream cheese. In addition to Lippert, who finished 11th at 1:37, she also beat the reigning world champion, Magdeleine Vallieres (EF Education–Oatly), 6th at 1:27, the 2021 road race world champion, Elisa Balsamon (Lidl-Trek), 17th at 1:58, and two of the most exciting young riders on the Women’s WorldTour, the 23-year-old Squiban and 19-year-old Viktória Chladoňová (Visma–Lease a Bike).

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Two queens-in-waiting

An unknown French rider last year, Squiban introduced herself to the racing public in the TdFFaZ by winning back-to-back stages with some audacious racing, attacking out of breakaways near the top of the final climbs in both stages and even surprising herself in the process, after telling journalists following her first win that she would join a breakaway right from the start and ride the entire stage aggressively.

“Winning once at the Tour is already enormous,” she said at the time. “A second victory today, frankly, I’m at more of a loss for words than yesterday. I said for a laugh yesterday that I’d attack at kilometre zero. I actually did it in the end, but really, it was just a joke. It’s just incredible.”

There’s no joking anymore for Squiban, who began her season in fine style and looks to be a future star of the sport. This is the last year of her contract with UAE Team ADQ, whose leader, Elisa Longo Borghini, is 34 and nearing the end of a superb career. The team would be foolish not to keep the young Frenchwoman, who will have many suitors knocking at her door.

Put simply, Chladoňová is a future superstar. In 2025, she won the cross-country race at the UCI Junior Mountain Bike World Championships and was runner-up in the 2025 U23 World Championships time trial and road race. At 19! One year earlier, at 18, she won the junior cross-country race at the UCI Mountain Bike World Championship in Andorra. She is, of course, the reigning Elite-level Slovak road race and ITT champion. She also rides cyclo-cross and finished second in the 2026 UCI U23 World Championship in Hulst and has won the Elite-level Slovak national title four times in a row.

In other words, she can do it all. What other Slovak rider does she remind you of? Right, Peter Sagan. Have I said that she’s only 19? She finished fifth in the Valenciana, 1:23 behind Vollering and won the white jersey for best young rider. Chladoňová will never win the TdFFaZ, as Squiban might. But, barring serious injury, she has the potential as well as the versatility and skills to become the next Mathieu van der Poel or Wout van Aert. She and Squiban are the future of women’s cycling, which clearly is progressing from strength to strength.

Final GC Top 5 of the 2026 Volta Femenina de la Comunitat Valenciana