'The nerves before each season start are always the same' – Marianne Vos eyes third decade in pro road racing

As she enters her twentieth season as a pro and starts the hunt for win number 256 of her career, you could be forgiven for thinking that Marianne Vos might be getting a little tired of life on the road and all the massive demands professional cycling makes on a person.

Furthermore, Vos now has multiple World Championships and Giro d'Italia wins, an Olympic gold, and a seemingly endless succession of Monument titles and Grand Tour stage victories already to her name – and that's just to mention the highest of the highlights. So perhaps the sense of having achieved almost everything the sport can offer might well be getting a shade overwhelming too.

Well, think again. As Vos readied for her 2025 road debut at the recent Visma-Lease a Bike training camp last month in Spain, she insisted that when her season gets underway – which it finally does this weekend at the Trofeo Alfredo Binda – despite the familiarity of it all, she'll be anticipating the familiar sensation of butterflies in the stomach, too.

"You could say that in one way, you would have seen it all, but there is so much that changes, and a race is never the same, either," Vos told a small group of reporters.

"You've seen growth in women's cycling, for sure, specifically, but that also means a growth in knowledge and nutrition and equipment and training. So you need to keep improving and just challenge yourself to stay at the highest level.

"Actually, in that way, it's still exactly the same and the nerves before the start of the season are still exactly the same, too. For some people these things may be different over time. But not me."

All change in the peloton

Vos does recognise that even if she's coming to the start of her 20th season with the same approach and feelings, some things have changed radically since she last raced (and won) at the Gravel Worlds last October.

For one thing, there have been some significant alterations in team line-ups, from Demi Vollering going to FDJ-Suez to the return of Anna van der Breggen to SD Worx-Protime, and from Elisa Longo Borghini moving to UAE Team ADQ to the signing of Pauline Ferrand-Prévot at Visma-Lease a Bike.

Then there have been major reworkings of rosters of other top teams like Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto and Lidl-Trek, too. 

Vos is very much in favour of the key names being less concentrated in two or three major squads. But that point of view is perhaps more thanks to her wider-than-usual perspective on the sport after so long racing than it is being just because it might be better for her own team.

As Vos sees it, "I don't think it'll totally change this year, you will still see the same names at the front. But with the riders being more spread out and having more competition between them, it'll add some excitement to racing."

Regarding Visma-Lease a Bike in particular, the arrival of Ferrand-Prévot in 2025 as she switches from mountain-biking to road is greeted with considerable enthusiasm by Vos, saying "she's a fantastic addition to the team." (Ferrand-Prévot is equally pleased to be by her side, pointing out on social media before the Trofeo Binda that it will be the first time she's raced alongside Vos since way back in 2016.)

"We've got to give her the time to make that transition from MTB to road racing, but as a rider her mentality and determination will add value to all of us, to the team itself," Vos says.

"But we have a really nice line-up, some other riders with huge potential as well, so I'm looking forward to 2025 and seeing this team grow and rise."

There can be little doubt, though, that Vos herself will play a major part in how Visma fares this season. Wins in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Dwars door Vlaanderen and Amstel Gold in 2024 alone show that despite her veteran status she remains a massive factor in any of the major Classics.

On top of that, points classifications wins last summer in both the Vuelta Femenina and Tour de France Femmes, as well as victories from February to October are all testament to her underlying consistency in the stage races as well. At 37, Vos is still a surefire value, then, no matter the race. 

So what will change for her? Vos' main innovation, she says, will be the addition of the revived Milan-Sanremo to her program. However, challenges like Paris-Roubaix – one of the very few major gaps in her palmarès – and the Grand Tours are all staying in the 2025 mix as well. 

"I unfortunately had to end my cyclocross season prematurely due to a calf injury, but with the road season ahead, I was able to quickly shift my focus and prepare optimally," Vos said in a press release prior to Alfredo Binda.

"The team has already shown great things over the past few weeks, so I’m really starting to feel the excitement." 

Vos is getting back to grips with racing in a very familiar event, one which she has won four times before – and she's keen to go for victory again this year.

"I hope to be in the mix for the finale together with the team,” Vos said in the press release, "though it’s always a bit of a wait-and-see in the first race of the season."

"With the introduction of Milan-San Remo for women, Binda has taken on a slightly different place in the cycling calendar. It’s now seen more as a preparation race, which means I expect a tough race with many strong riders. It’s a great race, and I hope to fight for the win together with the team."

Then just a week later it's onto the revived women's edition of Milan-San Remo, about which Vos proved equally enthusiastic when discussing it at the Visma training camp.

"It's always nice to do something new. San Remo is fantastic to have as a goal, and it's beautiful that it's back," she said.

"For me, I'll focus to be at my very best throughout, and of course, there are some specific targets, and Paris-Roubaix is definitely one to really go for. But it's still cycling, anything can happen. So I will really try to maintain a good level throughout the whole season and peak in the races we target."

More gravel, less gravel?

Vos' first victory in a World Championships dates from 2006 on the road, but her latest, in gravel, is as recent as last October. That triumph doesn't mean she'll focus more on the gravel races in 2025, she said in January, but equally she's not ruling out a full-time switch to the off-road discipline for when she retires, as several top-name riders like Alejandro Valverde have done. 

"It's too soon to say, I'm not thinking about what I do after this career. I really liked the Gravel Worlds and there may be some additions of gravel races to my calendar. But for now my goal will always be to try to find the balance between the gravel and the road season." 

She is equally non-committal about whether she will be racing in Rwanda in the Road World Championships in September, saying simply that it's "not on the program yet. I need to have some final thoughts about it, but in any case it's really nice it's taking place there." 

Time and again in the interview, Vos' sense of a broad perspective on how the sport has developed and is developing is clear, whether it's discussing the first ever Road World Championships in Africa or the major changes in team rosters for 2025.

But rather than be totally focused on the top end of the sport where she remains for now, it's interesting that one of her biggest concerns for the future of women's cycling could not be further away from WorldTour racing and her own veteran status. 

When it comes to prize money and wages, "there's been huge growth [since she turned pro] and step by step it'll grow even further. But the main thing maybe is that because of that growth there's also going to be a bigger gap between the top teams and the smaller ones: the WorldTour and the ProTeams, as well as the riders that want to step up from juniors or amateurs.

"So there should maybe be more of a focus to work on this step-up level or category in a good place. These are the most important for development." 

She adds that the UCI is aware of the issue and points out, too, that Visma-Lease a Bike offer plenty of opportunities for riders to progress as well. That said, Vos also recognises that the contrast in women's cycling between when she turned pro and 2025 is enormous. 

"In general, we have moved forward a lot, if I look at the place where women's cycling was 20 years ago, compared to now, there's been huge growth, I could not have imagined this. So there is not much to wish for, even if of course there are always more steps to take." 

"I wouldn't say there was one particular thing for change, it's fantastic there's more broadcasting of women's cycling and for a broader audience, everything is more recognisable – the races and the calendars we have, the teams and riders.

"So there's more background. And the more you know, the more you feel the emotion as well. And that's what sport is about."