About Demi

I always really wanted to ride real cycling races. But I had a younger brother and 2 sisters and we are gardeners children. That is why it was difficult to cross all over the country for competitions. When I was 16 years old and my brother and sisters were a bit older, I finally joined a real cycling club.. RWC Ahoy. I had a great time, finally cycling competitions with other cyclists. I wasn't very good, but for a first year I wasn't very bad either. I quickly picked up the technical stuff. I was not afraid to ride in the pack, dared to tear through corners at full speed. At my first NK the first year I cycled I was 29th. A second year with the juniors followed and I got a little better every time. When I got to the promise I switched to another team: Restore cycling ladies. The transition to the promise was immense for me. I didn't train much, and if you suddenly have to ride races over 100 km that is quite a task. Still, I didn't do very badly, except for a few dnfs, longer matches turned out to work in my favor. In my 2nd year as a junior, my skating trainer made some training sessions for me, so I quickly started to ride better. I also did well on the ice in the winters. I rode one PR after another and I became 2nd in the South Holland Championship in 2015/16 and 2016/17 and 1st in the ZHK in 2017/18.

In the meantime I had finished my Flower Design training in 2017, and started working as a florist at 2 flower shops, if I had time I also worked in my father's greenhouse. In this year I also taught my friend know, he also competed at the time. We went to the Ardennes for a number of weekends to train, sometimes for 5.5 hours. I actually couldn't handle this yet and was completely burned out, but then I noticed that I could recover very quickly and got better quickly. In 2018 I went to SwaboLadies and started training with Stefan van Klink. Then I made the biggest steps and I also learned a lot about course insight! Something that took me very far that year. I did an exercise test a few times a year and that showed me again that becoming a professional cyclist was quite feasible, I also set goals a few times a year, which I achieved faster than I expected.

I slowly stopped working and went more and more for my sport. I found this a difficult decision, but in the end, my friend especially helped me with this. He always believed that I could pursue my dream of becoming a professional cyclist. That dream had kind of faded away in the years I worked. The dream came up again in 2018 and with the help and trust of the people around me I went for it! Because when I did something I wanted to do it right and I want to work hard for it. My boyfriend moved to Switzerland, and whenever I could, I also liked going to Switzerland. Training there was very good for me! I had a good season in 2018, many people were impressed by my performance, I would not have remained unknown to the professional teams. Parkhotel Valkenburg was the first team to contact me at the end of the season. And in November I signed a contract for 2 years at Parkhotel Valkenburg. Now I live as a full-time professional cyclist and every day I get a little better, Acknowledge hard, dream, believe, trust and enjoy..

That's what I do every day to get better.

If you can dream it.. You can do it!!