As the cycling season progresses, there is much talk about Demi Vollering’s next steps. The skilled cyclist is set to leave Team SD Worx ProTime at the end of 2024, sparking many rumours about where she might go next. This news is especially notable as it contrasts with her teammate Lotte Kopecky, who has recently secured a long-term contract to stay with the team until 2028.
Vollering and Kopecky had contrasting fortunes in 2023. While Vollering delivered strong performances throughout the season, enhancing her standing as one of the sport’s top competitors, Kopecky not only matched but perhaps surpassed expectations with several championship wins. Her stellar season was quickly rewarded with a new contract extension.
Vollering, adhering to UCI regulations, has said that she will not announce her future team until August 1st, the earliest date set by the governing body for riders to officially disclose transfers for the upcoming season. This has left fans and followers eager to see where she will take her talents next. With no confirmation, the rumour mill is going into overdrive with teams linked to the signing of the Tour de France Femmes winner only to then also rule themselves out.
Demi Vollering 2024 Transfer Rumours by Team
UAE Team ADQ
The first place to start is at UAE Team ADQ. Marijn de Fietst talked in her column on NRC in February 2024 about an offer made by the team at the end of the 2023 season for Demi Vollering with a salary of 1 million Euros. That headline was picked up and repeated across almost all of the cycling media at that point as that salary would comfortably be the largest seen in women’s cycling up to this point. Whilst we don’t know what the top earners are actually on with precise figures there’s speculation that no one else has hit the 500k mark to this point but after her 2023 season, this number kinda made sense for guaranteed success.
This week, however, Daniel Benson appeared to rule UAE Team ADQ out of the running. From what we know, only Silvia Persico has a contract on the team past 2024, with 15 riders on the 2024 roster needing to either renew or find new roles. That does allow for some flexibility in arranging things for Demi Vollering yet.
Lidl-Trek
There hasn’t been much serious linking to Lidl-Trek other than the fact they’re a team that could actually afford to sign a superstar like Vollering. Their issue, however, is that their budget is largely tied up in their existing riders. Unlike UAE Team ADQ, they don’t have as many riders with expiring contracts with 7 needing deals. One of those is Elisa Longo Borghini who has gone a long way at the start of 2024 to show she’s worth building a team around. Always a contender, her big win at the Tour of Flanders and pair of smaller wins at Brabantse Pijl and Trofeo Oro in Euro pretty much already eclipse her unlucky 2023 season.
How Lidl-Trek juggles the likes of Deignan and Spratt, with both probably not worth quite as much as their original deals now as they move from race contenders to leading elite domestique roles is going to be interesting. Ilaria Sanguineti is an important rider for team star Elisa Balsamo and the pair of Elynor Backstedt and Brodie Chapman are workhouses who chip in with the odd result. An interesting one could be Ellen van Dijk who just hinted at a possible retirement after the Olympics on her podcast recently but could very well continue. It really feels like there isn’t the budget available to sign another big star to the team.
At the end of March, it was said that Lidl-Trek had spoken to Demi Vollering’s agent but by mid-April, Daniel Benson also reported that Lidl-Trek had ruled themselves out of the running at the same time as UAE Team ADQ.
FDJ-Suez
This week saw FDJ-Suez borderline all but confirmed as Vollering’s future destination by some. We had a tweet with a rumour from Gazzetta dello Sport’s Ciro Scognamiglio. That was then followed up within hours by AD.nl just flat out declaring Vollering is on her way to the French team in their headline.
Funnily enough, back in February, the FDJ-Suez team boss Stephen Delcourt had this response to the 1 million offer supposedly made by UAE Team ADQ:
“We need to be more clever about the money, The visibility of our sport is not at the same speed as our teams’ budgets. We have visibility like this and it’s good for the women on one side, but it’s not good for the long term sustainability of the sport.
If UAE is crazy and wants to offer one million for Demi, she can go, it [would be] good if every rider on SD Worx was on a separate team, but it’s not the normal price if we compare with the visibility of our sport. But I’m sure of one thing: Demi with UAE is not the same Demi.”
Stephen Delcourt (February 2024)
Before the latest rumours of a borderline done deal with FDJ-Suez surfaced, there were more comments from Delcourt that sought to downplay the chances of signing Demi Vollering. Whilst firstly acknowledging that his main sponsors in FDJ and Suez are up for renewal this season, he believes both are likely to re-sign up to 2028. He also brought up that their priorities are in the riders they currently have with Grace Brown, Marta Cavalli and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig up for renewal this season. Loes Adegeest and Gladys Verhulst-Wild are also up for renewal with both having done their chances a world of good with results in recent weeks. There was also talk that FDJ-Suez had engaged with Demi Vollering’s agent but that negotiations failed around this time too.
When pressed about Demi Vollering, Delcourt didn’t bite and seemed to say it was unrealistic, with hints that the team were hoping that Juliette Labous would become available when she is willing to talk contracts in May.
“How’s that possible? We’re not Dutch, and with Lapierre. Do you think it’s possible? Maybe we can start the negotiations tomorrow… I don’t know but every team wants a Demi, every team wants a Juliette Labous, everyone wants an Elisa Longo Borghini.”
Stephen Delcourt (April 2024)
It is interesting that Lapierre is mentioned here as well. The cycling brand was bought out by an American investment fund in 2022 and subsequently seems less willing to fund promotion through the form of pro cycling teams using their bikes. The men’s Groupama-FDJ team, which is linked to the women’s only through the sponsorship of FDJ moved to using Wilier bikes for 2024 after using Lapierre for 22 years. It feels a similar situation will happen for the women’s team.
As the done deal rumour evolved this week, the name of Specialized came to attention. Dutch sources like Wielerflits and Algemeen Dagblad began to mention the possibility that Demi’s signing by FDJ-Suez would be partially funded by Specialized as a personal sponsor of Demi Vollering. That would resolve the issue of Lapierre with the French team getting a serious deal and an upgrade in their equipment in the bargain. It helps to identify where FDJ-Suez might have achieved the budget needed and how they might yet get Demi Vollering and keep some of their big trio of renewals.
Movistar
The news was that Movistar was looking to strengthen its line-up after the departure of Annemiek van Vleuten with a strong signing this off-season. However, the team quickly ruled itself out of Demi Vollering (or Pauline Ferrand-Prevot) being that rider at the start of March.
At the end of March, team owner Sebastian Unzue also confirmed that the team hadn’t been in contact with Demi Vollering’s agent. A move to Movistar feels very much off the table.
Visma | Lease a Bike
The combination of a Dutch star on a Dutch team has led to some mentioning Visma | Lease a bike as a possibility. The team however has been offloading decent riders in recent years to other teams as it looks to invest in youth around its own obvious star in Marianne Vos. That doesn’t exactly scream that there’s a large budget available to the team in yellow and black. Famously Vollering and Vos were on separate sides of the Dutch Olympics team divide and the 2021 Flanders World Championships finish which saw Marianne Vos just miss out on the win. The initial reaction there was that Vollering had worked too much for her own chances and not her leader and whilst that thought didn’t necessarily stand up quite so much after scrutiny it was still the reaction most saw.
At the end of March, however, Visma | Lease a Bike ruled themselves out of signing Demi Vollering this year as they want to build their team around Marianne Vos and Fem van Empel.
Other Options
There have been no direct or indirect confirmations from these teams but a general feeling that they may or may not be in the running.
AG Insurance-Soudal
AG Insurance-Soudal are in the market for a big star with Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio set to actually retire this season after a few postponements to achieve some more great results. With the South African leaving the team, that frees up the budget to be spent on a star. As a Belgian team, they made an effort to sign Lotte Kopecky but she decided to stay with SD Worx. Will we now see a pivot to signing Demi Vollering instead? What may give that thought some legs is the split between the team’s founder Natascha den Ouden, sponsors AG Insurance and partial owner Patrick Lefevere recently. In Natascha’s statement, she said that there had been a difference in vision between herself and the others with her focus largely on development through the U23 and U19 teams. If the team are looking to pump money in to sign stars like Demi Vollering, that feels like a clear-cut difference as a possible reason.
Canyon SRAM
Canyon SRAM gets a mention as one of the few teams who actually could maybe find the budget to pull off the signing of Demi Vollering. They’re not exactly flush with money but the timing of key rider contracts lines up nicely to potentially be an option. Kasia Niewiadoma has been a mainstay of the team over the years with some great results but after 5 years without a road victory, maybe the Pole could be tempted elsewhere to finally break that duck. EDIT: Kasia finally won at Fleche Wallonne!
Also of note is that Chloe Dygert’s long-term contract, signed shortly before she suffered the horrific injury at the Worlds in Imola in 2020, is up at the end of this year. The American obviously has a big reason for not racing that much but you’d think the return on investment of what looked set to be a long-term signing of a major GC rider for 4 years hasn’t quite worked out. She’s been good in fits and starts over the last 2 seasons but could be a rider moved on to secure Vollering if they wanted.
Team dsm-firmenich PostNL
Another one where the Dutch rider to a Dutch team logic makes sense. The team hasn’t even been mentioned at all as a serious destination for Demi Vollering. Similar to Visma | Lease a Bike, their strategy in recent years has been to snap up the best and brightest from the junior ranks and develop them into contenders. Juliette Labous will be the focus of their re-signing efforts first as well with the French rider saying she won’t talk contracts until after May. Presumably, she will be looking to have a strong Vuelta to raise her value.
EF Education-Cannondale
We’ll finish with a left-field option in EF Education-Cannondale as probably the only Continental team likely to even come close to having the budget. The American team certainly made plenty of signings this off-season to get them immediately into a good place to challenge for UCI points which they’ll need for guaranteed Women’s WorldTour invites next season. That would make them a de facto WWT team in 2025, ready for a points challenge to join the top level officially in 2026. They’re off to a strong start already and it would be a big surprise if they don’t earn a Tour de France Femmes wildcard this year too. Whether they have the budget to sign a big star again is unclear as they already have the likes of Veronica Ewers, Kristen Faulkner and Alison Jackson under contract. The first pair in that trio are already signed for 2025.
