For all she is 35 and has three World Championships titles and an Hour Record to her name, Ellen van Dijk (Trek-Segafredo) has an excellent one-word way of summing up the fact that she has reached a point where she can start thinking about leaving a legacy: “Weird.”
“Because it’s crazy for me to think about that, that’s why it’s weird,” the Dutch star tells Cyclingnews in a lengthy off-race interview when asked to explain her very succinct analysis. “But it’s even stranger that I have to start to do that.”
“I mean, I’m really happy with what I’ve done so far, particularly as the Hour Record has always been a big, big dream race for me. Then to win another World Time Trial title was the best and I just have such a passion for time trialling and it’s also my speciality, so I’m really happy I have a nice palmares in that speciality.”
“But,” and she hesitates a little, “now I’ve done all that.”
The consequences of reaching the time trialling heights that Van Dijk has attained is that no matter what happens next, she has plenty in the bag already. For the record, that’s a mere 40 time trial titles to date, not to mention successes such as a Tour of Flanders back in 2014 or a Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta overall.
She’s also got a solid reputation as an excellent teammate, born out of another career mission Van Dijk always keeps in mind, “helping them to do well, that’s always been important for me,” she says.
But while some athletes might want to sit on their laurels at such a high point, Van Dijk is doing too well and is too happy in her time trialling – in fact, I almost lose count of the number of times she says how much she adores racing chronos – to want to stop.
That said, she says, it is “weird” to be thinking of a legacy, even though if she never turned a pedal in anger again, she’d already be counted as one of the sport’s very greatest all-time athletes.
“I definitely feel very relaxed now and I hope I can stay like that. Before I was feeling frustrated, like I was always saying, ‘I want to do this’ and/or ‘I still want to do that but it’s not working, why is it not working?’ But now I feel like I’ve reached what I wanted and what’s coming afterwards is a bonus,” she says.
“I had the same mindset for the Australian Worlds, so I know it works very well. Of course I’m still working hard, it’s not like I’m doing anything less in my training. But it feels more like,…
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