{"id":204730,"date":"2026-02-16T11:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T11:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=204730"},"modified":"2026-02-16T11:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T11:42:09","slug":"vollering-starts-year-with-dominant-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2026\/02\/16\/vollering-starts-year-with-dominant-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Vollering Starts Year with Dominant Win as Young Riders Also Shine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year was a mixed bag of results for Demi Vollering, who was riding in the first year of her two-year contract with the team now called FDJ United\u2013SUEZ. She had a great first half, winning four stage races, including the Vuelta Espa\u00f1a Femenina, and she won the European Road Race Championship in her penultimate race. But losing the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (TdFFaZ) by nearly 4 minutes to Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot (Visma\u2013Lease a Bike) \u2013 even if she was the second-best rider in the race \u2013 must still have rankled.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Vollering is already looking good<\/strong><\/h2>\n

As it is for the men, the Tour is the sport\u2019s crown jewel and, knowing how ambitious Vollering is, she will want revenge this year. So it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2013SRAM zondacrypto)\u00a0and won going away; her margin over the peloton led by Ma\u00ebva Squiban (UAE Team ADQ) was 52 seconds. Last year, her margin over second-place Marlen Reusser (Movistar) was 29 seconds.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s not bad at all for a season debut, especially considering the fact that after Saturday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

And her opposition wasn\u2019t exactly cream cheese. In addition to Lippert, who finished 11th at 1:37, she also beat the reigning world champion, Magdeleine Vallieres (EF Education\u2013Oatly), 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\u2019s WorldTour, the 23-year-old Squiban and 19-year-old Vikt\u00f3ria Chlado\u0148ov\u00e1 (Visma\u2013Lease a Bike).<\/p>\n

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A post shared by FDJ UNITED – SUEZ (@fdj_suez)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n