Marianne Vos will start in the yellow leader’s jersey for the third time in this Tour de France Femmes on Wednesday. The best cyclist of all time is still a leading figure in the peloton in her twentieth professional season.
Jos van Emden sometimes still comes across the photo. In the picture from 2010, he is next to Vos on a podium in Oudenbosch in Brabant. They are both honored for a Dutch time trial title. “That is my first memory of Marianne,” Van Emden tells NU.nl. “It’s nice that we were standing there together.”
The forty-year-old from South Holland stopped racing two years ago. He became a team leader at the Visma-Lease a Bike women’s team and now works there with Vos, who is two years younger. The fourteen-time world champion is showing again in this Tour that she is far from finished with cycling. She won the first stage and leads the standings after four stages.
“I’m not so fond of that terminology, but I called Marianne the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time, ed.) this week,” says Van Emden. “I’m not objective, but I don’t think there is any discussion about it.”
Indeed, you will not find anyone in the women’s peloton who begrudges Vos this honorary title. Even her competitors are happy that the Brabant native is excelling again in this Tour. “Marianne is the icon of women’s cycling,” says Lorena Wiebes, who beat Vos in the mass sprint in stages three and four. “Isn’t it great that she is still achieving such a high level?”
When Jacco Verhaeren joined the management of Visma-Lease a Bike at the end of last year, he was immediately assigned a special task. The coach who led Pieter van den Hoogenband and Ranomi Kromowidjojo to great swimming successes now had to deal with another Dutch sports icon.
“I was allowed to do the contract negotiations with Marianne,” says Verhaeren before the start of the fourth Tour stage in Saumur. “I had met her once around the Olympic Games, but I didn’t know her any further. It was nice that I was trusted to take on that project. And it went well.”
Visma-Lease a Bike announced last April that Vos had signed a contract for an indefinite period with the Dutch team. The two-time Olympic champion thus sent a clear message: she is not thinking of stopping anytime soon.
“I still think it’s great to be here in the Tour. I love cycling and the competition,” Vos said Tuesday in the finish location Poitiers. “And the growth of women’s cycling in the past twenty years is also a reason to continue. When you see how big the Tour de France Femmes has become, it is not difficult at all to stay motivated for it.”
Verhaeren knows that Vos is often asked about an end date for her career because of her age. “I think it’s nice to see that she’s not concerned with that. Her age doesn’t play a role for us either. She is and remains very good and very fit. And she rides almost every race. With the experience as if it were her first race.”
The blissful smile in Plumelec says it all. Vos books her 258th victory on the road in the first Tour stage, a dizzying number that no other woman even comes close to. She celebrates it just as exuberantly as her first professional victory, in April 2006 in Orlová in the Czech Republic.
“I see the same eagerness as then with Marianne,” says Marieke van Wanroij. The team leader of the Dutch team VolkerWessels was Vos’ teammate from 2006 to 2011. “In those days she was almost unbeatable. Now she has to choose a little more when she wants to peak. But she is still one of the best riders.”
Van Emden, who was a professional for sixteen years, calls it admirable that Vos always remains hungry. “You have to ask her how she does that,” he says with a laugh. “I can only take my hat off to the fact that she still lives for her sport. She is a real professional. And certainly not a saturated rider.”
The yellow jersey is a fitting reward for that, according to the entire peloton. “Everyone wants her to have the yellow,” says Van Wanroij. “On the way to France, I was in the car with a few of our riders who are making their Tour debut. They all said: ‘I think it’s so cool that I get to ride my first Tour with a great like Marianne.’ That says everything about her.”