My Best & Worst Ever Race Days – Karlijn Swinkels

BEST DAY

For sure, my best day on the bike so far was my first Elite win on the first stage of the Vuelta a Burgos last year. I was usually a domestique and I knew that was my job at the start of the race. I’m always happy to do it because I wanted to develop myself as a rider. But that day I made the front group with 20 others, none of them teammates. My DS told me sit on the back and wait for my teammates coming up in the group behind.

I had good sensations and decided to test myself on the climb. I wanted to be second at the intermediate point over the top, to see how I was feeling. I jumped, and then just eight girls were left with me. My DS said I was not allowed to drive the pace of the group but I could attack, so I did again and again.

Before the last kilometre, I told my teammates over the radio that I was feeling good, but the DS still told the team to close the gap and do a sprint lead-out. We were 10 in the front group, with three from Movistar and three from Canyon [so a sprint gave the team better odds of winning]. Instead, my teammates talked to each other and refused to close the gap. They trusted and believed in me, and I won.

It was really thanks to my teammates, because the gap was down to 10 seconds and they had the best lead-out train so they probably would have won the race that way. But because they respected me as a rider and I was always working for them, they let me go for the final. That meant so much more to me than the win itself and made it such a special victory for the whole team.

Two days later I had the chance to repay them. I still had the leader’s jersey and the DS said I had a free role, but an attack went away with all of the best climbers except for ours, Soraya Paladin. I was the only one with her on the front, so I rode my heart out to close the gap and she went on to win the race. I think it was the best stage race that we ever rode.

WORST DAY This was not hard to choose. It was in China, two years ago, at the 2018 Tour of Chongming Island. Before flying there I had a high fever, but I had to go to the race because the team did not have enough riders available. I had started to feel better by the day of stage 1 and was able to join the lead-out for the sprint finish, but our train crashed with another team at full speed, maybe 55 or 60kph. It was a horrible crash. I lost skin everywhere. The roads there are so dusty that they had to clean my wounds with alcohol, and then I could not take a proper shower because there is a high risk of infection from the water. We had to shower using bottles of water. I had to take a sleeping pill for the first time in my life, but I still could not sleep because of the pain. I actually threw up because I was so tired. In the morning I came down to breakfast and told the team that I thought I could start but they took one look at me and said ‘Karlijn, you should go back to bed!’

MY DREAM RACE – KARLIJN SWINKELS

Which is the race you dream of winning, the one for which you would swap anything else? Why does it mean so much and what experience do you have of it so far?

If I could pick just one goal it would be the Elite Women’s Time Trial World Championships.

If you become a world champion in the time trial, then you have really pulled out the best from yourself. Every single thing has to be right; you have to take every corner perfectly and be one with the bike. It means that if you win, you are the strongest rider.

Every athlete wants to be the best, and if you win the World Championships then for sure you are the best. All the top riders go there, all with their best shape. At other races, not everyone is there. For me, that makes the World Championships the biggest dream.

I have been to two Junior World Championships, Richmond and Doha, and I won the title in Doha. America was a great experience, especially because it was also my first time outside of Europe. As a first year Junior, it was so cool. We stayed with the Elite riders and they really taught us a lot. I was super nervous, but I loved everything about it – the people, the country, the atmosphere. It gave me so much motivation to get to another Worlds.

Then Qatar was a totally different experience. It was a strange country and no public was allowed at the races, so in that way it was very different. On the other hand, I still felt a lot of pressure because you have the atmosphere of the event in yourself – all the best riders are there, you’re with your national team, you know how important the race is. It was especially important for me to do a good result to try to get a professional contract. All of the other good Junior TT riders around me already had a team for the next year, but I didn’t.

The heat in Qatar was a problem for some riders, but our national team really helped us to prepare. We did lots of climatic training in a hot room to get used to it. I started the race without fear, ready to give my all, and I finished it the same way. My coach encouraged me to ride this way. I had lost the national title by one second and I did not want the same to happen again. I think that experience made me stronger.

I’m not a rider that can win a lot, but if everything falls into place I can win. When that happens, the feeling is impossible to describe.

When I moved from Junior to Elite, I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know anyone who had made that step. I went straight to this team and in that first year I think I wore the U23 jersey in every stage race just because of my TT, but I also knew that I wasn’t strong enough to keep it, to survive the climbs and the really long races. I understood that I still had a long way to go to race at the top level.

Between that season and this one, I had two years on a different team and it was a really hard time. I learned that I was even further from the top level than I’d thought, because it was the first time I’d ridden the WorldTour races and seen the level of the strongest girls. It’s so high. It really motivated me even more to keep training and to race hard. I had a lot of opportunities to do my own race and I think last year I made a big step. I’m able to follow attacks, survive more of the climbs… I have gone from being dropped to being in the peloton, so now the next step is to be in the front group and that is what I’m training for. It’s the same for TT – I hope to get back to the top positions.

For the last two years I have put less focus on TT because I wanted to improve as an all-round rider. If you want to improve at TT you need to put a lot of effort into it, with a special way of training. I spoke about it with my team and we decided that first I would develop as a rider. This year TT is again a focus for me. The European Championships were a big goal because it is my last year in U23, so I have been training a lot more on my Factor SLiCK TT bike.

There is no U23 Worlds for women and, of course, it is very hard to get into the Dutch Elite team! In the Netherlands, you know that if you make the team to go to the Worlds, then you also have a chance to win the Worlds. It will take some time, but I hope one day I will be there and will be ready.