"The Only Race I Really Want This Year" — Three Days Out From The Cauberg, Demi Vollering Names Amstel Gold Race Ladies As The Number-One Target Of Her Entire 2026 Season And FDJ-Suez Confirm A Squad Built To Burn Every Match Before The Last 8 Kilometres
Three days before the Amstel Gold Race Ladies rolls out of Maastricht with the deepest field the women's race has ever produced, Demi Vollering did something on Thursday morning she has never done before in her career: she publicly identified a single one-day race as the most important event of her season. "The Amstel Gold Race is the only race I really want this year," the Dutchwoman said at the FDJ-Suez team presentation in Valkenburg. "I want to win the Tour de France Femmes again, I want to defend my world road race title in Kigali, but if I could only win one race in 2026, it would be this one. I have never said that before about any race. I am saying it now." The admission is the most significant narrative marker of Vollering's debut season at FDJ-Suez.
The context is straightforward. Vollering has finished on the Amstel Gold Race Ladies podium three times — second in 2022, third in 2023, second again in 2024 — but she has never won the race. The only Ardennes Monument missing from her palmarès is the one that rolls out of Maastricht at the front of the three-race week. She has won La Flèche Wallonne Féminine three times and Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes four times. The Cauberg, which the race climbs three times on Sunday, has been the one hill that has consistently denied her. "The Cauberg is a puzzle," Vollering said. "You cannot solve it with power alone. You have to solve it with patience, with timing, with the right teammates at the right point. I have never had the right combination of all three on Amstel day. On Sunday, I will have."
What FDJ-Suez sports director Luis Guzmán revealed at Thursday's presentation was a squad built around the premise that the race will not be won on the final climb alone. The six riders who will line up for Vollering on Sunday — Marta Cavalli, Elise Chabbey, Évita Muzic, Vittoria Guazzini, Juliette Labous and Nienke Veenhoven — represent the strongest climbing train the French squad has ever fielded at a one-day race. "We are going to use every climb from the Geulhemmerberg onwards to put pressure on SD Worx-Protime," Guzmán said. "By the time we get to the final ascent of the Cauberg, we want the race to have only ten riders in it. If it has forty, we have not done our job."
The principal opposition on Sunday is led by Lotte Kopecky's SD Worx-Protime squad and by Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, racing her first Ardennes race since 2022 as part of Visma-Lease a Bike's three-race women's Ardennes block. Kopecky, the reigning world road race silver medallist, confirmed her Amstel start on Monday afternoon after initially leaving the decision open, and is expected to be the race's other great favourite. Ferrand-Prévot — fresh off her solo Paris-Roubaix Femmes defence last Saturday — is a less clear-cut favourite but has the form to be a factor. Behind those three, Italian climber Marta Cavalli, Polish climber Kasia Niewiadoma and Dutch home favourite Riejanne Markus are all credible podium contenders.
The tactical element that has shifted in the last seven days is the role of Ferrand-Prévot. Her Roubaix victory put 118 kilometres of solo racing into her legs last Saturday and there is real uncertainty inside the peloton about how recovered she will be by Sunday. Visma-Lease a Bike sports director Marianne Vos, herself a two-time Amstel Gold Race Ladies winner, said on Wednesday that the team "will race with no expectations on Sunday. We have just won Paris-Roubaix. If Pauline cannot match the pace on the Cauberg, that is fine. If she can, we race for her. That is the arrangement." Ferrand-Prévot herself has declined all media since Monday afternoon.
Weather for Sunday looks promising. The Dutch meteorological institute KNMI confirmed on Thursday morning that the forecast for 19 April across southern Limburg shows a dry day with a race-day high of 15°C and a moderate south-south-westerly wind of 16 km/h. The roads are expected to be dry throughout. "It is a racer's forecast," race director Leo van Vliet said. "No rain, no extreme wind, no cold. The strongest rider on the day will win the race. That is exactly what the Amstel Gold Race deserves to be." Start time is 12:05 CET over 155.3 kilometres and 24 climbs. The Cauberg is the decisive climb every time the race has been contested in its modern layout; on Sunday, for the twelfth year in a row, it will be again.
For Vollering, the race is the centrepiece of an Ardennes week that, if it goes to plan, will end with her lifting three trophies in eight days. She will then take ten days off the bike, restart her Tour de France Femmes preparation at Burgos on 14 May, and ride into the Tour in late July as the defending champion. That is the plan. The execution begins on Sunday, on a climb she has never won on, at the end of a season she has described — for the first time in her career — as built around a single one-day race. "I am not usually like this," Vollering said, smiling at the end of the Thursday press conference. "But the Amstel Gold Race has been in my head for four years. On Sunday, I intend to get it out of my head."