Sometimes losers don’t have to say anything to show how they feel. As Ellen van Dijk stands with her head down on her bike, the assistant unzips her right shoe to give Van Dijk some air on her broken ankle. Nothing is said. It’s not necessary. They both know that the Olympic time trial they just completed was not the great day Van Dijk had hoped for.
There is a deep disappointment, because that was the day Van Dijk (37) had been living on the edge 24 hours a day for seven weeks. He had to, because the question of whether he would make it to Paris had been hanging over his preparation for a long time, ever since he crashed into a trailer at a training camp in Spain seven weeks ago.
His fall was harder than he said.
There he fell and broke his ankle. By the end, there was a lot more going on. His left foot was also broken, as was a finger. He had deep cuts that required 24 stitches. In addition, he was also diagnosed with a muscle hernia. He was lucky, he said Saturday, that the fall had not ended worse.
It is inherent in top-level sport to believe that despite all those injuries, one can still return to the top level. It never occurred to her that she would give her place to reserve Riejanne Markus. Of course not. The Olympics remained too important. The fourth place in Rio eight years ago still hurts. She then seemed to be heading for a medal, but in the uphill time trial she went sideways. Crying, she suppressed her grief on a beach chair.
But to have a chance to get revenge for that, she had to live “to the fullest” every day, as she put it. The mental strain was enormous. Every day there was doubt as to whether she would make it or whether the training would succeed. There was no room for backlash or error. “It was never stable, you always had to raise the bar.”
From half an hour with a fan to long training sessions
Van Dijk was in a cast for three weeks. She could only ride a few times on a stationary bike, for half an hour, and then find a fan to cool the temperature inside the cast. Even the doctor who operated on her in Holland said that the Games would come too soon. The process up to Paris was, at best, good for dealing with the accident.
After each training session, she would check her ankle for swelling or turning blue and wait for the pain to go away. But the reactions were small, the pain never became too intense. It was only a week and a half before the Games that she knew for sure that she would go. In one test, she achieved a power output that would make a medal possible on a super day.
She arrived in Paris and called it a miracle. Just as it was a miracle that she had already returned so successfully after her pregnancy this year. But she also knew: if I want to win a medal in Paris, another miracle is necessary.
There was no third miracle.
That simply did not happen. On Saturday, after the finish line on Pont Alexandre III, she thanks her carer, rests her head on her hand and looks into the distance. Yes, where to go really? To absolutely nothing. It did not work. It no longer matters that she finished eleventh, far behind the winner Grace Brown.
The statement will follow later. It was not good enough, but the rain had also played a role. Van Dijk was too afraid of falling on the slippery corners, knowing that he would not be able to easily release the pedal due to his locked ankle. “I didn’t want to ruin my ankle anymore.”
After two-thirds of her time trial she was sure she wasn’t good enough. Still, she wanted to make the most of every step to “eliminate the pain and misery.” “This was the only way to retaliate for what we’ve done in the past few weeks.”
Then the tears follow. After seven weeks, emotion is finally allowed.
Vollering excited after time trial: “Maybe hundreds of children saw this and now they want to ride a bike too”
Demi Vollering was emotional after her time trial (fifth) when the greatness of the Games was talked about. She was twenty seconds off the podium (Grace Brown, ahead of Anna Henderson and Chloe Dygert), she had been hesitant at times about risking her Tour de France Femmes on the slippery corners, but she also wanted to put in a good performance. “After all, these are the Games. You can say what you want about the Tour, but this is the greatest thing. This is what people who never see cycling see. Maybe hundreds of children saw this and now they want to ride bikes too.”
Among the men, there was a Belgian success: Remco Evenepoel won, Wout van Aert finished third. The Italian Filippo Ganna made sure that it was not a double. Daan Hoole finished seventeenth.
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