Bauke Mollema is almost always sure of his case, but on the eve of the 78th edition of the Vuelta a España, doubts sound in his voice and the Groningen driver issues a profit warning. “I’m afraid it’s coming to an end.”
It’s the standard question for a professional cyclist going into a Grand Tour. How do the legs feel? With Bauke Mollema, usually prepared down to the last detail, the answer is almost always something along the lines of ‘oh, that’s fine’, but this time the 36-year-old from Groningen is surprising and also a bit disturbing. Not at all des Mollema’s.
,,It’s going pretty bad”, it sounds from Barcelona, where the peloton will be launched on Saturday with a team time trial for the 3153.8 kilometer Vuelta. ,,No, I can’t really say that I’m in top condition. The last few weeks have not been going very well. Not physically, not the workouts. I’ve also been sick for a week and I still feel the after-effects. It was good until the end of July, but from San Sebastian it went downhill.”
Ameland
While a competitor like Wout Poels went with his family to the high mountains at ski resort Isola 2000 in recent weeks, Mollema stayed with the family on Ameland and at recreation parks near Arnhem, on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug and in Drenthe. Whether that was the right choice in retrospect?
,,It rained a lot and it didn’t get really hot either, so when I arrived in the heat of Barcelona this week, it took some getting used to”, says Mollema. ,,Not that I regret it, because the past few weeks were also just the summer holidays for me and my family. I didn’t want to completely change that. We’ll see how it works out.”
Any talent left?
Mollema relies on his basic condition. ,,I have of course trained a lot uphill in the months before. That’s not all gone right away. And surely there will still be some talent left that I can rely on? I think I need a week to adjust in Spain. I’m afraid it will be tough the first days, hope I can survive and then I’ll focus on the second and third week.”
First ride on the new Col du VAM
No matter how bad Bauke Mollema felt last week, he still had the honor of being the first to climb the new Roof of Drenthe. The Groningen man knew that the newly constructed top on the VAM mountain, which will also serve as an executioner during the European Championships in Drenthe in a month’s time, was almost ready. A message to organizer Thijs Rondhuis was enough to be the first to go up.
,,It was nice to see it”, says Mollema about the new slope. “The climb has become a bit more difficult. He’s a bit longer than before. It takes you almost a minute and a half and it is quite steep. It is certainly an addition to what was already there. It makes it just a little harder, especially when racing is full during the European Championship. You have to go over it seven times. I hope to be there at the end of September, I would like to get a spot in the team. A European Championship in your own country is very special. Hopefully the form will be in the right direction by then when I have the Vuelta in my legs.”
In theory, Mollema should never have been so fresh at the start of a grand tour. The climber rode the Giro in May, but after that he only had seven official race days in three months. “That feels pretty crazy too,” he chuckles. ,,I don’t think I’ve been home as long as this year since turning pro. It’s also nice to be home a bit more sometimes, only the last few weeks have gone a bit less.”
Freebooter squad
Mollema was of course also unintentionally at home for part of the time, because the veteran did not like the fact that he was not included in the Lidl-Trek team of the Tour de France. Yet he does not have to look for motivation there, there is no question of revenge. “Nah, no, that doesn’t really matter at all. That doesn’t seem like a good advisor to me,” says the Groningen man who is sent on the road with a freebooter team with many climbers.
Mollema himself, who already won a stage in the Vuelta in 2013 and finished third in the general classification in 2011 and took home the green jersey, will try to hijack a stage. Mollema wouldn’t be Mollema if he hadn’t already marked some nice stages in the round book. ,,That would be nice, to cross the finish line again, ten years later. The first nice ride seems to me stage eight to Xorret de Catí. That’s near Alicante, my old training area when I lived there. But that is a very tough ride, then you have to be very good. And the twentieth stage to Guadarrama also seems like a fun one. More than 200 kilometers and all the time on and off.”
‘Now once reversed’
But first find the rhythm. “I still have faith in it. It is also nice to be on the road again. You know what it is about big rounds; they take so long and anything can happen. I’ve had that it went super well in the beginning and that I was completely done with it after ten days. Hopefully it’s reversed now.”