Demi Vollering interview: How do you rebound from losing the closest Tour de France in history?

In 1989, Greg LeMond became the first American cyclist to win the Tour de France. His winning margin? Eight seconds. But a winning margin is also a losing margin.

"You never stop grieving over an event like that," wrote his vanquished opponent, Laurent Fignon, 21 years later.

If eight seconds sounds brief, try four. LeMond's victory remained the closest Tour de France history until August 18 2024, and the summit of Alpe d'Huez. Vollering needed to close a gap of one minute and 15 seconds on Katarzyna Niewiadoma to retain the title she won in 2023.

Vollering is a star of women's road cycling. She won the Tour de France Femmes in 2023, triumphed at this year's Vuelta, another of the sport's leading races, and is one of the first female road cyclists to be sponsored by Nike. Having worked as a florist before turning professional, she could now open her own shop with the bouquets she's received for winning races.

But this year's Tour de France would not be one of them. Vollering was indeed the first rider to the top of the Alpe to win the stage, but Niewiadoma — just — won the race's general classification by four seconds and at the finish line, Vollering wept.

"Nothing was going in," she tells The Athletic. "It's like my brain was blocked. Everything faded, like people were walking around, but I was sitting in my own mind."

But five weeks on, Vollering is back on her bike. She won the queen stage of the Tour of Romandie at the start of September, and although she had another minor crash at the end of that race, she will be fit for her main goal at the back end of the season — the UCI World Championships in Zurich which run from 21-29 September.

Before taking on both the time trial and road race, Vollering spoke to The Athletic about those four seconds — and how important, or not, they are.

Vollering likes things to be difficult.

"I always like it when it's really hard, because I want the group as small as possible," she says of Saturday's World Championship course. "Then the situations are simpler, and it's a woman-against-woman fight. It's not about tactics any more, but just a really hard battle. That's what I like."

She would have loved the situation facing her at the Tour de France last month. Vollering sauntered to victory in the 2023 edition, flying up the Col du Tourmalet, the most famous climb in the Pyrenees, to win the yellow jersey by three minutes and three seconds.

More of the same looked to be happening this year — she was surprised to win the time trial on Stage 3, finished second in Stage 4 into Liege, and held yellow by 22 seconds with the mountains, her favourite terrain, still to come.

But cycling has a habit of making the dramatic mundane and the mundane dramatic, and on the outskirts of the industrial city of Amneville, all expectations for the race were upended along with Vollering's front wheel. Crashes are part of the sport, but there are different types of falls — ones from carrying too much speed, one from aggressive positioning, and ones where the rider has almost no clue what happened.

"It was a strange roundabout," explains Vollering, with the crash barely caught by television cameras. "It turned back way more than we could see, and it was a little bit downhill, so we were going really fast. Before I knew it, I saw girls crashing in front of me, I think they braked too hard.

"But I stood up on the pedals and actually thought: 'I've saved myself, I'm going to make it'. And then (team-mate) Lorena (Wiebes) came from out of my view and took my front wheel. Before I knew it, I was on the ground.

"It was a s*** situation — I had so much pain in my lower back and down my leg, there was just no power in them. It was quite a long time before I could stand up, but then, I realised I could not bend back down to grab my bike. So by the time I'd picked it up and put my chain back on, the clock was already ticking."

Vollering lost one minute and 47 seconds on the stage, and there was widespread criticism of how SD Worx-Protime, Vollering's team, handled the crash. Usually, a team leader who fell would be paced back to the front of the race by team-mates — even more so if they were in yellow.

Here the crash was close enough to the finish that there was no realistic proposition of that — but the support of team-mates would have limited the time loss. Instead, Vollering's team-mate Blanka Vas sprinted for the stage win, while Wiebes, the rider who inadvertently brought down Vollering, continued on to sprint for eighth.

The Lanterne Rouge YouTube channel, cycling's most popular English-language analysis account, titled its video review of the stage: "The Worst Betrayal of the Yellow Jersey I've Seen".

"The communication went completely wrong with the team car because they didn't see me on the ground," says Vollering. "They helped my team-mate Niamh (Fisher-Black), who also crashed, but then drove away. It was only then they realised.

"They said they didn't hear me — I'd said on the radio, but because Niamh also said she crashed, it probably came at the same moment, and you can't have two voices on the radio. Then finally Mischa (Bredewold) got a call that she needed to wait for me, but she was already two kilometres away because of the speed of the peloton.

"I think it was bad luck — they didn't really give me an explanation. But I know also that it can be really hectic. Of course, maybe they should have told Lorena to wait because she was in the second group, but I'm glad they didn't say anything to Blanka, so she could win the stage. Maybe also some of the tactics earlier were a problem, because Christine Majerus and Barbara (Guarischi), who normally wait for me, were already dropped."

In stage races, where brutal days follow brutal days, there is no time for an inquest. Niewiadoma, who was now leading the race, is strong in the mountains. There would be one chance for Vollering to take back significant time — the final stage which ended at the summit of Alpe d'Huez, one of cycling's most legendary climbs.

On the day, Vollering attacked Niewiadoma even earlier, forcing a gap over the Col du Glandon with a high-risk move 54 kilometres from the finish.

"You need to be ready to lose it," Vollering says of her approach to racing. "Because if you don't dare, you can't keep it in your hands. You have to gamble — and that's the scary part, because everyone wants to win it.

"So I went on the Glandon because I wanted to risk everything — to give it my all so that after the stage, I would not have any regrets. This was really important to me. And I wasn't scared to go."

Fellow Dutch rider Pauliena Rooijakkers went with Vollering, herself a contender for overall victory. If they had worked together in the valley approaching Alpe d'Huez, their lead may have been even larger, but on the orders of her team car, Rooijakkers let Vollering do all the work.

"It's a bit sad because if she would have ridden with me, she could have finished second in GC (general classification)," says Vollering. "Instead she was third."

At the bottom of the climb, Vollering was around 45 seconds ahead of Niewiadoma — she needed another 25 seconds to snatch the yellow jersey. In between, just under nine miles in 50 minutes of racing, featuring 1,100 metres of ascent and the Alpe d'Huez's iconic 21 switchbacks.

"It really helps to focus on my breathing," Vollering says of her mentality during the climb. "It has to be step-by-step, because if you start to think ahead about how long there is, then it starts to get really, really hard. You have to stay in the moment.

"There are moments on a long climb like that where your mind goes to a different place, where you start to think negatively or get insecure. That's where the breathing helps. Sometimes I'll even try and look around at the beautiful nature and the mountains, it calms me down."

On the summit, Vollering outsprinted Rooijakkers to take 10 bonus seconds for winning the stage — and the clock started.

"I felt somewhere in my bones that it wasn't enough, because I'd heard the time gap just before," she remembers. "I came over the finish line, I sat down on the ground, watched the time on top of the finish line ticking by.

"All I could think was: 'Let time fly. Let Kasia stop'. You just wanted time to move forward because it can, you know? I remember the Tourmalet (where she won in the previous year's Tour) and I was like: 'Where are they? They should be here already?'.

"This was a different feeling. And then I saw her coming around the corner, and I knew I wasn't going to make it."

Vollering was ashen post-race, visibly unable to process the colours and noises around her. Weeks later, her team-mates discussed post-race details — such as each of them eating a Snickers bar as they crossed the line. Vollering was unable to remember doing so, until told that she had. Eventually, her partner and manager Jan de Voogd found her.

"He was really proud of me," Vollering says. "He said I raced with my heart, that it was an amazing race, and that he loved me anyway. It was all the things you want to hear, but also what you don't, because at that moment, you want one thing and that's the yellow jersey."

Vollering needed a break. Still battered from her crash, she went camping with her family at the base of Alpe d'Huez — from their site, they could see the climb's summit. Nevertheless, they largely skirted around the race, instead chatting about where to walk the dog, e-bike routes, the weather. Only with time did the Tour de France enter the conversation.

She also attended the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort. It was a distraction, but also good for her brain — as a special guest of the Alpine team in their garage, she took internal notes on what cycling could learn from Formula 1, such as tyre blankets and mechanic warm-ups.

Vollering wants to drive change in women's road cycling, taking the sport to where it can and should be. Her Nike contract places her at the sharp end of the peloton and her voice carries weight. Towards the end of the Tour de France, there was criticism of broadcasting deals which prioritised showing full coverage of early stages of the men's Vuelta a Espana, another Grand Tour, rather than the queen stage of the women's Tour.

"When we have good coverage, so everyone can see us, everything else will follow," argues Vollering. "We'll attract more fans, we'll for sure get more money through sponsors, and then we'll also have more riders in the bunch because young girls can watch us racing and get inspired."

She also thinks the women's Tour de France should be extended — not to the three weeks of the men, but to at least 10 stages, providing wider opportunities to a range of riders and more opportunities to regain time. On a Strava podcast with former USWNT midfielder Tobin Heath, the pair discuss their dislike of the official name 'Tour de France Femmes', asking whether the men's should be renamed the 'Tour de France Hommes'.

"Our races are pretty spectacular to watch, really aggressive and active, and with men, it's sometimes a little different," Vollering says. "We should be proud of the races we have, and not necessarily copy everything from the men. We should dare to have it a little bit our own way.

"There are some gaps we can close with the men. But, for example, the F1 Academy (a female-only racing series intended to develop elite drivers) is really on their own feet. As women's sport, we should focus on different sponsors and the F1 Academy do that perfectly — they're sponsored by Charlotte Tilbury (a make-up brand) and that's really cool. So they've made their own league, and not just copied everything, they've tried to do their own thing."

Next year, Vollering too will be doing her own thing. She confirms she will be leaving SD Worx-Protime to join a new team next year, with widespread reports she will be joining French squad FDJ-Suez as the highest-paid rider in the women's peloton.

"I'm really looking forward to developing myself by leaving that comfort zone," she says. "It's about being uncomfortable, getting to know new team-mates, new types of training. It's scary, of course, because you never know if you're going to be as successful as you were before.

"But I've already started training with my new coaches and learned a lot already in two weeks, so I'm really motivated for that."

For now, the focus is on the Road World Championships, where she will wear the orange of the Dutch national team. She will compete in tomorrow's time trial and the road race next Saturday, with the latter the priority — Vollering has never won the rainbow jersey awarded to the world champion, finishing second last year.

The sight of her after the end of the Tour de France was of an athlete in disbelief. As Vollering says, nothing else mattered, not the stage win, not words, not an embrace. Those defeats will always linger, even if it is sometimes better that they do not — so in the days before the World Championships, does she feel any different to how she did amongst the clouds of Alpe d'Huez?

"I was so close, and the way I lost was just really painful," she says. "(The crash) was just a stupid. And that was the only thing I could think about on the podium. But then, pretty fast actually on the next morning, I could see how proud my family and friends were of my performance in the race. I saw how excited the fans were by me going early and giving it everything.

"In a stage race, you're so focused on one day and then onto the next day, and so I had the chance to think about what I did. It was special to win the time trial and take yellow in my home country. I was proud that I only finished second in a photo finish the day after.

"I know also, that if that collision hadn't happened, I would have the yellow jersey. But it was still a successful Tour for me. It's a pity, but it's a story which will stay in people's heads for a long, long time. So that's also something special."

(Top photo: Alex Broadway/)