As she stood at the summit of Alto de Cotobello a few moments after winning the Queen stage and overall of this year’s Vuelta España Femenina, Demi Vollering spoke into the radio which sat on the collar of her red leader’s jersey. Her face was stained with grime and dirt, but her smile was spread wide across it: “Girls, good job, we won La Vuelta,” she chimed to the rest of her team.
The operative word in Vollering’s sentence is ‘we.’ It may have been the Dutch rider who crossed the finish line first and celebrated in the mist, but Vollering is acutely aware that her success would not have been possible without her FDJ-Suez teammates. Throughout La Vuelta, the French team have presented themselves as a rock-solid, well-drilled, disciplined unit who are all aligned towards one goal: winning the bike race. It may sound simple, but those who know professional cycling will be aware that it is, in fact, far from it. We only need to look back to last season to understand this.
It’s been well-documented that Vollering’s experience with SD Worx-Protime, the team which kickstarted her rise to cycling stardom, was not wholly positive by the end of her contract in 2024. The 28-year-old lost the Tour de France Femmes last season by just four seconds after crashing early in the race – none of her teammates stayed behind on that fateful day in Amnéville to pace Vollering back to the peloton. SD Worx gave their reasons why after the race, but it was clear to see that the Dutch rider was unhappy with the support she was receiving from her team. It only got more evident as the season went on; the Tour de Romandie even saw Vollering and Lotte Kopecky sprinting against each other for the general classification victory, despite being teammates.
So entered FDJ-Suez, the French team with a big heart and big ambitions, giving Vollering the chance of starting a new chapter in her career. The signs that she had made the right choice were already clear in the off-season; images and videos from training camps were filled with smiles and jokes, and this continued when the racing began. After her Strade Bianche victory in March, Vollering said to the media: “I feel really different this year. Last year was sometimes hard. I could not really race freely because my mind was not free. I was just full with too many worries.”
It's true that with the current depth of the women’s peloton and the fact that Vollering is the most marked rider in the bunch, her Vuelta victory is only the FDJ rider’s second win of this season. By her high standards, she might have hoped for the top step of the podium at the one of the Ardennes Classics – this didn’t happen in the end, but Vollering was always close, and her team were always fully behind her.
Everything came together over the past week of the Vuelta, and the red leader’s jersey seems a fitting reward for the season FDJ-Suez have executed so far. It’s payback for tactically astute and clever racing, as well as the perfect case study of why teamwork is so crucial in cycling. Vollering was protected at every key moment in this race, she had support in the mountains and on the flats – somewhat of a contrast to Anna van der Breggen at SD Worx. While the Dutch team had a successful race in terms of stage results, Van der Breggen (who finished third overall) did not have the same type of support in the mountain stages as her rival, something that made the difference when it came to the general classification.
As we look ahead to the rest of the season, FDJ-Suez have every right to be extremely confident in their future. This isn’t just because of how strong Vollering is as an individual, but because of FDJ’s collective power. The likes of Juliette Labous and Évita Muzic have sacrificed their own chances race after race to support Vollering. This sort of cohesion and bond is a hard thing to create in a team, but the French squad have it nailed. It is clear that, finally, Demi Vollering is exactly where she needs to be.
