Annemiek van Vleuten may have looked completely in command right through the race as she took her fourth and final victory at the Giro d’Italia Donne this year, though it’s been a long road to the top step for the rider who is set to retire at the end of 2023.
It was in fact 14 years ago that the Dutch rider first stepped onto the start line of the race, that year beginning in Muggia, within the north-eastern town of Trieste, and through those early years of her cycling career, she may not have ever imagined that as the end of it neared she’d be stepping up to the top step in the maglia rosa for a fourth time.
That was an era where Van Vleuten, a late-comer to cycling, pegged as a Classics hopeful, was a support rider in a powerful team that included three-time race winner Marianne Vos, at the peak of her climbing power.
On top of that, there was a rising Anna van der Breggen and Pauline Ferrand Prévot were on their way to consecutively holding world titles across road, cyclocross and on the cross-country discipline on the mountain bike.
The turning point however came with a new team and the Olympic Games in Rio – which didn’t end well but clearly demonstrated her climbing finesse, opening up a whole new raft of opportunities, not only in the Giro d’Italia Donne but also across an expanding women’s calendar.
As the world champion draws her time at the Italian race to a close, with a fourth victory, we take a look back at her journey at the longest stage race on the women’s calendar.
2010 to 2015 – The support years
Being a Dutch rider and racing for a team based in your home country, had some advantages and also perhaps some disadvantages for Van Vleuten. She was, undoubtedly racing alongside the best in those pivotal early years of her development at the Nederland bloeit cycling team that morphed into Rabobank. However, that also, meant that it was a difficult task even for a highly talented rider to stand out.
In Van Vleuten’s first three years at the Giro d’Italia Donne, her results were nothing to write home about, with the rider not particularly high up in the GC, Many stage results were in the top ten, but she finished 27th overall in 2010, 75th in 2011 and didn’t make it through till the end in 2012 or 2013.
Still, even then the rider was unequivocally in a support role as at the time she was seen not as a climber but as a powerful Classics rider. Of course, with three-time winner Vos leading the charge for her team and a strong…
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