Movistar leader aims to defend Giro d'Italia and Tour de France titles and cap off sparkling career at Worlds
Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar)(Image credit: Getty Images)
Annemiek van Vleuten has revealed her final season race schedule of 13 races, peppered with three altitude training camps, before she officially retires from pro cycling at the end of this year.
The reigning World Champion will begin her season at Setmana Ciclista Valenciana in February and move on to a series of Spring Classics, with major targets later in the season at the Giro d'Italia Donne and Tour de France Femmes in July and the World Championships in Glasgow in August.
Van Vleuten is currently in the middle of a six-week training block in Colombia before joining her Movistar teammates in Spain at the Setmana Ciclista Valenciana from February 16-19.
After that Van Vleuten will target the Spring Classics beginning at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, a race she won in 2020 and 2022. She will then travel to Italy for Strade Bianche, where she is also a two-time winner, and then head to Tenerife for an altitude training camp in March.
The Spring Classics in full swing, Van Vleuten has opted not to race Paris-Roubaix but will compete at Tour of Flanders, a race she won in 2011 and 2021, and then all three Ardennes Classics: Amstel Gold Race, Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, a race she won in 2019 and 2022.
Her stage racing calendar will begin at the revamped La Vuelta Feminina, where she has won the two previous editions, but this year the race has expanded to seven stages and moved to May 1-7 on the Women's WorldTour calendar.
A second training camp in May will be followed by the Dutch National Championships in June and then the two major targets of the Giro d'Italia Donne and the Tour de France Femmes, both in July.
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Van Vleuten announced her pending retirement last June and later revealed that she would like to defend her titles at the two Grand Tours before she ends her 16-year career.
“I am clear I want to race both the Giro and the Tour again. It is something that I have already been talking about with my coach and with my team. I still love racing in Italy, and I want to ride one more Giro," Van Vleuten said.
Van Vleuten won the Giro d'Italia Donne in 2018, 2019 and 2022, and she won the new edition of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift in 2022.
The last two races of her career will be at UCI Cycling World Championships in August, where she will compete for a third title in the individual time trial and a third title in the elite women's road race in Glasgow.
Kirsten Frattini is the Deputy Editor of Cyclingnews, overseeing the global racing content plan.
Kirsten has a background in Kinesiology and Health Science. She has been involved in cycling from the community and grassroots level to professional cycling's biggest races, reporting on the WorldTour, Spring Classics, Tours de France, World Championships and Olympic Games.
She began her sports journalism career with Cyclingnews as a North American Correspondent in 2006. In 2018, Kirsten became Women's Editor – overseeing the content strategy, race coverage and growth of women's professional cycling – before becoming Deputy Editor in 2023.
