'It's not about taking revenge' - Demi Vollering dismisses rivalry with SD Worx-Protime ahead of FDJ-Suez debut

Demi Vollering has played down talk of a rivalry with her old team, SD Worx-Protime, as she prepares to face them in her first races with FDJ-Suez.

The 28-year-old signed for the French squad last October, amid rumours of tension between her and co-leader Lotte Kopecky.

Speaking at a team press conference on Tuesday morning, Vollering said she will not be out for revenge when she meets her former teammates on the road.

“First of all, I don’t see it as a battle between the two teams. I think it’s a battle between the whole peloton,” she said. “I think a lot of teams are stepping up with strong riders, so it’s a very nice spread this coming season. I think we will have competitors in all kinds of teams in the peloton at the moment.

“It doesn’t feel for me like I want to take revenge on [SD Worx-Protime] or something, because I left there with good feelings. It’s not that I want to take revenge on them. Of course, we want to win from them, but that’s another thing.”

The Dutchwoman will begin her season this Thursday at the four-stage Setmana Ciclista Valenciana. There, she will ride against SD Worx-Protime’s Anna van der Breggen, her former coach, who is returning to racing after three years of retirement.

Her first meeting with Kopecky is scheduled to be Milan-San Remo, the inaugural edition for women, on 22 March.

“All the public want a big fight,” said FDJ-Suez manager Stephen Delcourt about the prospect of facing SD Worx-Protime. “As Demi says, it’s not a fight between SD Worx and us, because if we think about that, for sure the two teams will lose a lot.

“Everyone says, ‘FDJ-Suez is a smart team. They’re a French team. They’re not a killer team.’ But we don’t want to kill the others, we just want to win and create something together.”

Riding for SD Worx-Protime last year, Vollering collected 15 wins – all at WorldTour level – including the overall at the Vuelta Femenina, Itzulia Women and the Tour de Suisse. She also won two stages of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, eventually missing out on retaining her yellow jersey by just four seconds.

Now, as she heads into her FDJ-Suez debut, Vollering said she feels “much more ready than what I felt last year”.

“This winter was way more relaxed, way more calm. Last winter, I had so many decisions I needed to make, so much stress I had in that period,” she said.

“I already feel very much at home in the team. It was of course really scary to join a new team with so many new people around me, but the first camps made it easy because I felt fast in my place. Everybody was really nice and it’s just a very relaxed atmosphere, nothing to prove.

"Of course, the Tour de France is always a very big goal of mine, and also the team now, of course. It's a really nice goal to work together towards, but there will be other goals also on the road already. First the other goals, and then of course, the big goal."