The whole peloton is experiencing something new at the Tour de France Femmes but perhaps none more so than Le Col-Wahoo’s Eva van Agt, who is racing at one of the biggest races of the season less than three months after signing her first UCI contract.
25-year-old Van Agt joined Le Col-Wahoo in May as a mid-season signing from a Dutch club team. She is not only new to cycling but also made the move from a totally different sport. She spent four years playing collegiate field hockey on a scholarship at Northwestern University in Illinois, where she also studied a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Economics.
“It was very professional,” Van Agt told Cyclingnews. “I was pretty much a full time athlete, so that’s actually not too different [to now].”
Going to the United States to study and play is not an uncommon path for Dutch hockey players – whose women’s national team is ranked number one in the world – due to the lack of sports scholarships in the Netherlands.
After finishing her studies, Van Agt returned to the Netherlands in 2019 with the intention of continuing to play hockey. But when the pandemic hit in early 2020, an old hobby on two wheels became her new competitive outlet.
“I always had a bike, but I just used it for training. I think I rode per year what I ride in a week now, so not too much,” she said of her journey into cycling.
“And then in the US I did some cool trips, backpacking with the bike and it really caught my interest. I also did a three month trip, I bought a van and slept in that for three months, doing bike trips from there.
“Then I came back to the Netherlands to play field hockey again, but it was Covid season again so then I started cycling even more. I joined a student club in the city where I live now, Maastricht, and it was such a great community and I really wanted to have the lifestyle of a cyclist.
“Then I thought ‘okay, maybe I can try to become pro’ and have this lifestyle, that would be awesome.”
A steep learning curve
Realising this was what she wanted to do, Van Agt took up racing in local events in the Netherlands, racing most recently for club team Restore Cycling, before catching the attention of Le Col-Wahoo at the Volta Limburg earlier this year.
Though Van Agt has experience of being a competitive athlete and the pressures that come with that, she has been thrown in the deep end since signing for Le Col-Wahoo.
She had only raced one UCI race – the Drentse Acht van…
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