When Daniek Hengeveld was just 18 and taking on her first UCI race in the elite ranks, she almost delivered the biggest of upsets on stage 1 of the Healthy Ageing Tour, just caught on the run into the line after she took a last lap flyer. The ambitious break didn’t work back then - but on Friday with her new team, Ceratizit-WNT at the Santos Women's Tour Down Under, it did.
In her first race with Ceratizit-WNT, Hengeveld foiled the plans of the sprinters on stage 1 to take out her first Women’s WorldTour win, bouncing back from a crash at the Tour of Britain last year that left her out for months and battling to find her feet.
"I lost a little bit of confidence after the last two years and, well, I was finally racing like I was 18 again," Hengeveld told reporters after the stage. "I was like - Oh, this is why I race. It's really nice."
The 22-year-old, who started with Continental Team GT Krush Tunap in 2021 took her first win there at a prologue at the Belgrade GP Women's Tour, and then moved up to the WorldTour with DSM-firmenich PostNL in 2023, where she stayed for two seasons.
The Dutch rider then headed to Ceratizit-WNT this season and immediately used her time trialling skills to keep the pursuit at bay in the 102km stage from Brighton to Aldinga and, finally, grasp the second and unquestionably biggest victory of her career by attacking and launching solo at under 50km to go.
"At the end, I just hear my sport director in my ear, ‘come on, come on, come on’. It's like, ‘Oh, fuck, maybe they're really close!" said Hengeveld.
They weren’t, as it turned out, it was just pure excitement.
"I appreciate that he was still cheering me on because it gave me the extra Watts."
The support perhaps means all the more given the year she has just had.
"The comeback from the crash was actually really hard," said Hengeveld. "I struggled a lot, especially with the mental part of it. I could train, and I still enjoy training, but it was just hard to see if I actually still liked to ride my bike, and how it is to actually ride with a team who also believes in me.
"And it works out in this team, and it's actually really good, it's nice, it's a good feeling," said Hengeveld, who had just taken to the podium with her new teammates, who rode straight over to cheer her on and share the moment.
"It's a small team, and I already know … that it’s actually like a family environment. And I really enjoy the time with them and just have fun and get the wins like that. It works out already here. We want to keep on going like this," said Hengeveld, who is looking toward the Classics later this season.
"It couldn't start better than it did this summer here with an attack and winning solo," she said. "So it's a nice start."
What’s more, it’s a start that has not only given her a stage win but also put her in the ochre jersey of the race leader, with a margin of 43 seconds to her nearest rival. There are however two tough stages still to go, with Saturday finishing atop Willunga Hill and Sunday delivering more than 2,000m of vertical ascent as the race takes on five Stirling climbs.
"I'm not the typical climber so we will see if I can stay in the leader’s jersey," said Hengeveld.
"But otherwise, I want to give it to one of my teammates. That's also fine, and we're just gonna be aggressive again, and hopefully it'll work out again."
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