Demi Vollering reflected on the first elite World Road Championships since 2014 that the Dutch did not win a medal, saying her rivals did not bother to respond to other attacks and instead rode to make sure she lost the race.
The Tour de France champion from last year added the fact her team mates - Riejanne Markus and Marianne Vos - were clear in a small breakaway group on the last major climb on the course meant she could not attack.
And that inability to make it hard for everyone else, including the women who eventually beat her at the finish had hampered her race. But she was clearly annoyed over her belief her team mates were given the freedom to attack, while the other top riders rode to make sure she did not win.
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"You know what's difficult. Those other girls don't respond to Riejanne and Marianne anymore. They all ride to make me lose," she said. However, the Dutch team manager saw things differently and suggested Vollering had ridden an unwise final, isolating herself with her efforts and playing into the hands of her rivals.
After the small group Markus and Vos were in was brought back - mainly through the efforts of
Elisa Longo Borghini (Italy) on the final lap - Vollering put in some late attacks on the smaller climbs and dropped her two team mates, and Dutch coach Loes Gunnewijk said it appeared wanted to win too much.
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"With the knowledge she has now, she should have waited," Gunnewijk said of Vollering attacking several times and dropping her two team mates. "Our chances would have been bigger if we had been there. Then we could have played the game. Now it was up to Demi alone and that is very difficult against these girls."
However, Vollering also said her hands were tied the final time up the main climb on the course because her team mate mates were up the road. That meant it was up to others to make a move, meaning she could not begin her final much further out from the finish in a bid to drop her rivals on the hardest part of the course.
“It was a shame that I couldn’t really do anything on the last climb because we had Marianne and Riejanne in front. So it wasn’t up to me. That was a shame, because the pace was a bit too low and it was too easy on the climb.”
"But it's easy to talk afterwards. You can always say: if only we had done it this way or that way. That's always hard to say."
In the end, Vollering did far too much work on the run-in to the line in the six-rider front group and only finished in 5th. Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) took her second gold medal in two years, with Chloé Dygert (USA) 2nd and Longo Borghini 3rd.
