Kelderman Ends an Eleven-Year Drought With a Stunning Solo to Win the Dutch Road Race Title at 35
Wilco Kelderman has written one of the feelgood stories of the national championships weekend, the 35-year-old Visma-Lease a Bike veteran ending an eleven-year victory drought with a superb solo win to become Dutch road race champion for the first time. Going clear with 25 kilometres remaining on the hilly circuit around Nijmegen, he soloed home in the red, white and blue to a victory few would have predicted.
For a rider whose career has been defined by near-misses, it was a long time coming. Kelderman stood on the podium of the 2020 Giro d'Italia and has collected a string of runner-up placings in Grand Tour stages over the years, but his last individual win dated all the way back to the 2015 national time trial championship. This was, remarkably, his first professional road race victory.
The decisive move took shape with six of the fifteen finishing laps remaining, when Kelderman attacked in the company of Tim Marsman of Alpecin-Premier Tech and Darren van Bekkum of XDS-Astana. Inside the final 40 kilometres the leading pair shed Van Bekkum on yet another ascent of the Van Randwijckweg, leaving Kelderman and Marsman to fight it out — until the Visma man decided to take matters into his own hands.
With 25 kilometres left and the chase closing to within thirty seconds, Kelderman chose to go alone rather than gamble on a finish-line dash. It proved an inspired decision. He steadily extended his advantage over the closing laps and rode clear to the line, with Bauke Mollema taking second and Jochem Kerckhaert completing the podium.
The victory carries an extra resonance for Visma-Lease a Bike, a team that has endured a difficult run-in to the Tour de France with injury scares to Wout van Aert, Christophe Laporte and Edoardo Affini. Kelderman, however, was quick to play down any suggestion that his form might earn him a late Tour call-up to replace Affini, insisting the question was "out of the question" and that his focus was simply on savouring a long-awaited national title.
At 35, Kelderman has become an experienced road captain and mentor within the Visma set-up, and the jersey is a fitting reward for years of selfless service to others. For the next twelve months he will race in the colours of Dutch champion, a tangible and deeply popular prize on a weekend when new road champions were also crowned in France, Belgium, Italy and Great Britain.