Anne Knijnenburg will have to wait a little longer for her first Tour de France Femmes. The VolkerWessels rider from Berghem had been selected by her team for the sport’s most prestigious race, but a stubborn knee injury has forced her to withdraw.
Knijnenburg was set to make her Grand Tour debut in what would have been her second season with the squad. It comes after a promising spring campaign that included a second-place finish at the Région Pays de la Loire Tour and fourth at Trofeo Oro in Euro, performances that had underlined her growing strength on the European scene. Only last week she spoke with local outlet DTV Nieuws about returning to training after three weeks off the bike, but even then she admitted that things weren’t quite right.
Following consultations with team doctors on Monday, the decision was made that Knijnenburg cannot race the Tour this year, and VolkerWessels will now call up a replacement rider.
Reflecting on the setback, Knijnenburg gave an emotional and honest assessment on Instagram. She explained that the past few months had been brutal, involving the biggest crash of her career so far and a stubborn knee injury. Despite this, she had fought hard to keep moving forward while her body was crying out for rest. Hoping to make it to Nationals and then the Tour, she kept going until it became clear that she couldn’t. Missing the Tour hurt a lot, she acknowledged, especially because cycling had stopped feeling like freedom and more like a fight.
Knijnenburg added that, somewhere along the way, she had stopped enjoying the thing she loved most. It reminded her of her running days, when pushing through pain was the norm. It didn’t get easier then, and it doesn’t now. But she had learned that strength isn’t just in pushing on – it’s also in knowing when to pause. For now, she was pressing pause to rest and, most of all, to heal. She hoped to come back not half-present or hanging on by threads, but whole.
