Only three years ago, Anne Knijnenburg was a two-time Dutch champion in athletics. In 2021, she won gold in the 1,500m race in the indoor championships, and the following summer she won the 800m title. She was one of the Netherlands' big running hopes. “From the moment I won the 1,500m race aged 19 against elites, I thought, ‘OK, I’m good, I can have big ambitions.’ And then when I became Dutch champion I really saw an Olympic future,” she says.

But then everything came tumbling down – at least from a running perspective. “I had a couple of injuries, the worst one being a stress fracture in my foot which took a long time to recover from,” Knijnenburg says. “I eventually stopped because of a hamstring injury that was taking too long to get back from.” Naturally, Knijnenburg was despondent. But having grown up with triathlon parents, and having competed in a variety of sports herself as a junior including heptathlon, Knijnenburg wasn’t going to pause her sporting dreams. Instead, she was going to repackage them as cycling dreams. Three years on, at the end of the 2025 season, Knijnenburg topped the GC in a WorldTour race – the Tour of Chongming Island in China. “It might not be the biggest race, but it really meant a lot to me,” she smiles.

From running to cycling

Running, to Knijnenburg, is the truest judge of an athlete’s condition. “I always loved the simplicity of it – you put on some shoes and you go for a run,” Knijnenburg says, speaking with Rouleur by phone after her end-of-season holiday in Italy. “It’s you against you. You just have to be the best version of yourself, and it’s about going as fast as you can. It’s a bit dumb actually!”

Even now as a pro cyclist, Knijnenburg continues to embrace running. “I still run two or three times a week,” she says. “Most of the time I do 6-8km, but in the winter I like to do long runs of 15-20km, because I think they make you super strong. If you go running for an hour you can do a lot, but if you go cycling for an hour it’s basically a rest day. It’s good to train the body in different ways, including the lungs and hearts, and it’s especially good for bone health.”

Shock on Knijnenburg's face as she becomes Dutch 1,500m indoor champion in 2021. Image: Andre Weening/BSR Agency/Getty Images

When Knijnenburg had to hang her competitive running spikes up aged 20, the idea of a life on the bike didn’t even cross her mind. “I always had a bike because my parents were triathletes, but I hated cycling as a runner,” Knijnenburg admits. “But I was forced to do bike sessions because of my hamstring injury and I kinda love it.” In the autumn of 2022 she bought a cyclocross bike, signed herself up to local races, and determined she “was pretty good at it.” More importantly, was the realisation that “I loved it. It’s the moment when I decided, ‘Let’s go cycling’.”

She finished fifth in the U23 Dutch cyclocross championships in 2023, and joined the club team WV Schijndel who raced plenty of UCI races. Knijnenburg thrived: she won three domestic races in early summer, prompting Parkhotel Valkenburg (now VolkerWessels) to recruit her later in the season; she'd only been taking cycling seriously for less than a year. “I didn’t reach out to any teams,” she says. “I started cycling for a club who rode a great program, and some teams noticed me. They liked my background and liked the project.”

In October 2023, Knijnenburg enjoyed another success: she became national champion in duathlon – a sport combining running and cycling. According to local news reports, she “practically destroyed her competitors.” Knijnenburg, though, is far more pragmatic and humble about her achievement. “Duathlon is really not that big in the Netherlands," she says.

All in for cycling

Whether that’s true or not, by now Knijnenburg was convinced that cycling was her new sport, ending her university studies in sports management in favour of more time on the bike. “I really believe that if you live for something, and do everything right, you can achieve anything and everything you want,” she says. 

Last season, her first full year as a professional rider, Knijnenburg took her maiden UCI-registered win at the Cyclis Classic, and claimed the mountains jersey in two races. “I never really thought about the standard of racing I was doing – UCI 1.1s, 1.2s or WorldTour races were all great for me. All I want to do is to ride and race aggressively.”

Knijnenburg has been exposed to top-tier racing with VolkerWessels, and now wants more. Image: ASO/Thomas Maheux

If you haven’t watched Knijnenburg race, her style is exactly how she describes it. “I’m not built for the long mountains, but for the punchy courses, the Classics. We can all wait and go to the line with each other, but I’m not afraid to suffer.” That mentality, she believes, has its roots in her running career. “I was used to suffering as a runner, and whether you’re suffering on a bike or as a runner, it’s still suffering. That’s what I love.” 

What else Knijnenburg enjoys is winning. And no cycling victory has been as big as Chongming Island. “It’s a sprinter’s race and I had zero expectations for myself, but I just attack and race aggressively and see where it takes me.” She attacked on stages two and three and came to the end found herself as the overall winner. “People see me attack and riding aggressively and sometimes they think it’s pretty dumb, so to win because of that it felt like I was doing something right.”

Now, Knijnenburg, still only in the infancy of her career aged 23, wants to push on further. “The spring Classics, races like Milan-Sanremo and De Ronde [Tour of Flanders] are big goals for me,” she says. “I wasn’t able to ride the Tour de France this year because of injury, but I think riding a Grand Tour would be really good for my development.

“It’s all about having faith in yourself, trusting that you belong there. That’s the biggest thing in cycling – believing you can race with and against the best. I enjoy riding aggressively, and now I want to do that in bigger races and get even better results. I’m still so new in the sport and physically I can make big steps. At the moment I'm just riding my bike, not doing anything special, but I want to learn how to race and learn how to win.”

Cover image by: ASO/Thomas Maheux