For the Dutch star, dreams are the starting point of the greatest triumphs. At the 2026 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, she managed to put her past nightmares in the race behind her and claim a resounding victory: three stage wins and a second overall title.
In Nice, two giants of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift lined up neck and neck at the start. Just a handful of seconds separated Demi Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (8, a number rich in symbolism in the immense history of the Tour), forever linked by their battle on Alpe d’Huez. In 2024, at the Isère resort, the clock had swung in the Pole’s favour by an even slimmer margin — 4 seconds that felt like an eternity. It was neither the first nor the last showdown between these two proven contenders, permanent fixtures on the Tour’s general classification podium. But after carrying her Yellow Jersey to new heights on the Col d’Èze, it was the “Oranje” star who pulled clear, both on the Côte d’Azur and in the record books
After her first Pyrenean triumph in 2023, Vollering claimed another victory in Nice. She did nothing by halves: two decisive attacks, on Saturday and Sunday, made her a two-time Tour winner. She moves ahead of her contemporaries Annemiek van Vleuten (1 title in 2022), Niewiadoma-Phinney (2024) and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (2025), and reaches heights first explored by Italian legend Maria Canins (Tour winner in 1985 and 1986). To claim a third Tour, like Jeannie Longo (1987, 1988, 1989), she will need to embark on another conquest. Vollering is surely already thinking about it.
A florist and skater in her early years, the Dutchwoman found herself a cycling motto: “It all starts with dreaming.” She embraces the idea of dreaming big. And seeing her shine through the streets of Nice, it is easy to imagine her adopting Saint-Exupéry’s maxim as her own: “I made my life a dream, and my dream a reality.” The undisputed leader of the FDJ United-Suez super-team for the past two years, and a sporting icon backed by major companies, Vollering has shaped her path from Pijnacker (her hometown, just outside Rotterdam) to Nice, via Switzerland.
She was therefore something of a local star at the Swiss Grand Départ of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. Several years ago, Vollering left the Dutch plains behind to settle in the Swiss mountains, where she immerses herself in nature and prepares for her next conquests. Her first assault in Lausanne foreshadowed the battles to come: an attack in the finale and third place at the finish, behind the flying Lorena Wiebes and Kim Le Court-Pienaar. Three days later, she was third again, but in very different circumstances: the fight for the Yellow Jersey was entering its decisive phase with Marlen Reusser’s victory in the Dijon time trial.
The following day, Vollering laid down a marker by winning in Belleville-en-Beaujolais, after a series of attacks on the slopes of the Col de Durbize and Mont Brouilly. Caught up in her head-to-head battle with Reusser, she was unable to respond when Niewiadoma-Phinney surged clear on Mont Ventoux. Was Vollering going to finish second overall again, as she had in 2022, 2024 and 2025? Her many misadventures have often left her as runner-up at the Tour, even as the victories keep piling up (14 in 2026, 69 since the start of her career).
The first finish in Nice gave her the chance to hit back strongly. The final assault on the Col d’Èze promised a grand finale. It crowned a Sun Queen. Vollering is no eternal runner-up. She can even win three stages in a single edition of the Tour (a new record in the modern version of the race) and add even more lustre to her Yellow Jersey by taking the final bouquet while wearing the iconic tunic. A true apotheosis. But the story is far from over: “I still have many dreams, on and off the bike.”
