Little Marijn de Vries never suspected that a professional cyclist was hiding inside her. The activist, who was in it from an early age. The cycling analyst tells it like it is, and expects the same from others. ‘As editor-in-chief, simply make a statement: “We do not tolerate sloppy behaviour”.’
When you get off the train in Zwolle, you need eyes on the back of your head. Cyclists arrive from everywhere, pedaling and chatting, they take up all the space. Zwolle was already the cycling city of the Netherlands in the past and it aspires to hold that title again in 2030. Among other things, the current bicycle mayor must achieve this, and that is Marijn de Vries (born in Sleen, 44).
In her early thirties she worked for the editors of the television program holland sports, when she suddenly rolled into the pro peloton. After her unexpected cycling career, she returned to the television world. She has recently become a cycling analyst for the Flemish Sporza. De Vries cycled to our place of appointment on a baby blue e-bike with a child seat on the back and a large plastic container in the front. She is still beaming from her morning ride on the road bike. Because cycling, she still likes it as much as when she discovered at the age of 28 that she was good at it. Between 2009 and 2016 she participated in the peloton.
Let’s rewind fifteen years. You then worked as a sports journalist and decided to live like a professional cyclist for a year as an experiment. Did you already dream then to become a reality?
“That was secretly my ambition, but in the beginning you don’t know if something like this will work. I was already almost 30, had only been cycling for two years – quite fast, but there are more women like that – but luckily I had some contacts in the world thanks to my job. When I got a contract, there was some reserve here and there: what is that old aunt doing here? But for me it was a liberation. As a young journalist I felt inhibited in my ambitions and suddenly I was able to put all those ambitions into my sport. Moreover, it is also just fantastic to discover that you can do something very well.”
“The best thing about sport is the self-confidence it gives you. You do things with your body that surprise you. Those achievements are also undeniable. You know, we humans are very good at self-sabotage. And women have that even more than men, I see that in the clinics I give. When we have made an intellectual achievement, we tend to put it into perspective or even minimize it immediately afterwards. After I wrote and forwarded my column, I still think: well, this made no sense again.” But when you’re cycling, you can’t ignore the fact that you’ve covered a distance at a certain speed.”
Did your cycling talent run in the family?
“I don’t come from a sporty family. The television was sometimes turned on during the Tour de France, but it was not watched very much. Before I started cycling, my parents had nothing to do with it.”
They thought: there should actually be grandchildren. Instead they got a daughter in the pack?
“Precisely! At first my parents didn’t really understand why I wanted all that. Because of me they have grown with it and have become infected. Today they often look at the course. In the beginning, before every game, my mother would say, ‘Be careful?’ Of course I couldn’t answer ‘yes’ to that, because you don’t act carefully in a match. They preferred to know immediately after a race if everything was okay and they were in all states if I was not immediately available. But sometimes you don’t immediately have your phone, or you have to go to the doping control… We’ve agreed: we won’t do that anymore. When I stopped, my mother admitted she was relieved.”
During her cycling career, Marijn de Vries was (again) picked up by the press. She wrote columns for years Fidelity highlighted Newspaper of the North the Tour de France and has been writing columns since June last year NRC . She revealed in early March in one of those columns how she faced misconduct day after day during the Tour de France in 2016 – she was one of the regular analysts of The evening stage on the NOS. During the car journeys in France, a male colleague found it necessary to use obscene language all the time. ‘Then he’s talking about bitches. And fuck. About which bitches he fucked, by name and surname. Which bitches he still wants to fuck.’
Through the grapevine she heard how the man in question also said such things about her. “Imagine how that gnaws. How to start doubting yourself. How powerless you feel. (…) It ate me empty, inside.’ De Vries raised the matter with the final editor, with the (only) result that the duos were changed. ‘Can you imagine how you feel then? Nude. Dirty. Small.’ In the following years, De Vries was asked less and less by the NOS and finally no longer.
After the column was published, she received many messages of support. More testimonies surfaced of transgressive and intimidating behavior by the presenters of NOS Sport, and eventually the four-person editor-in-chief resigned. The colleague and former professional cyclist whom De Vries referred to in her column without mentioning him by name was also kicked out as a freelance analyst. His dismissal led to sour regurgitation among his defenders, who ‘played the woman’.
Since then, De Vries prefers not to return to that matter. Partly because it sometimes gets too much for her, partly because she fears it could impact her livelihood – she moderates many debates, does company presentations and gives lectures. But mainly because the story is too often reduced to that incident, when it should be about the larger, she thinks, the social problem.
If you again threaten to lose your job because you raise something, have we really evolved as a society? Whoever tells the truth will be punished doubly.
“Yes, but what has changed is that these kinds of stories are now being heard and taken seriously. I think what’s going on here is that society finds whistleblowers complicated. People do not always know how to deal with women and men who speak out on important matters. I can imagine that if you are organizing a conference and need a moderator, and if you have three names on the shortlist, you would rather not choose the person who is currently a hassle. Even if you agree 300 percent with what I said. It’s double. When you speak up, you know that trouble is coming and that you have no control over it. At the same time, that is also who I am. I think it’s important to say certain things. And I think: maybe some doors will close, but others will open. In the end, it’s about being able to look at myself in the mirror.”
Do you think those who are famous should use their voice?
“With the platform comes a responsibility. I was in Switzerland in January to interview Marlen Reusser, a Swiss rider and super interesting personality. At the age of 16, she entered politics for the Greens in Bern, because she wanted to actively contribute to a better world. Later she started studying medicine, based on the same idealism. But in both sectors she became frustrated because the tanker is so difficult to turn. Today, as a cyclist, she says she has an ‘easier life’ than her fellow students who have become GPs, but her fame has given her more influence. She thinks she should use that voice. And that’s actually what I’ve been doing for years. I have become a bit more frugal, though, because if you say something every week, people quickly think: there you have her again.”
Ploats and bastards
“It is also not only for ‘famous’ people to speak out. Media bosses or editors-in-chief should also do the same: make a statement and say out loud that sloppy behavior will not be tolerated. You don’t have to comment on individual issues, but if those kinds of themes arise, you can send the message: ‘We don’t want this in our editorial office’. Over and over I get the question: how do we get more women in sports journalism? People quite easily assume that there are hardly any women who want to do it. In the meantime, I have done two extensive interviews with students who have researched the theme and would like to go into sports journalism themselves, and they both came to this conclusion: the women are there, but there is no open support from the editors-in-chief if something happens . That’s why many young women don’t feel safe with the idea of going into sports journalism at a sports editorial office.”
Are the editors-in-chief in the Netherlands and Flanders too cowardly in that regard?
“I assume the good, so I rather think that they take it for granted that women are treated normally in their editorial offices that they no longer say it out loud. But apparently that is not obvious. Because when I hear those students, there is really a lot of doubt: suppose I end up in a difficult situation, will I be supported?”
It has also been said and written about Sporza that it is a macho environment. Or maybe: wax.
“Yes, I know the stories. But I have always felt very much at home, received a warm welcome and always had the feeling that if I said something went too far for me, it would be immediately respected. Of course there are egos and machos out there, but I am also an ego and can be a macho too. I also like making bad jokes and discussing, but that doesn’t change the fact that you can say it if something isn’t okay for you, and the other person has to accept that. If you speak out about transgressive behavior, it is very easy to act as if you can’t have anything. I think the opposite is true.”
“I do not want this to be an indictment, but I do think that we should become aware of certain things. One of these is that a boss should find it logical that men and women are treated equally in an editorial office. They have to stand for that too.”
There is still a way to go. On the podcast Get up! gave you an anthology three years ago. From ‘You chose that package nicely with your bike’ to ‘Well, you can pedal hard. I’ll give you a tip: maybe you should start racing’, to ‘You have big wheels for a girl, say!’.
“And: ‘You do have an expensive bicycle for a woman’. Fortunately, that has now changed, today I hardly hear it anymore. Men now know that there are also women who can cycle. And there are quite a few women with expensive racing bikes. We also see it on our cycling trips (De Vries and her partner run a company together that organizes cycling holidays and events, ed.). When we started in 2016, we organized a women only trip, because we thought it was a high threshold for women to join a mixed group. There was a market for it at the time, but we will be organizing another one soon women only event and there is already much less interest in that. We’ve talked about it; why doesn’t that work anymore? I think that everything is changing quickly, and that we are now in a transitional phase in which many things are already going well, but the old culture is still rearing its head here and there.”
It is striking how in recent years you have put more compassion in your columns than before. Is that conscious?
“Anyway. Years ago I was one of the first to write about equality in sports. I was quite activist about that at the time, because I really thought we should all talk about it. Now there is a larger social debate about it, not just about men and women. There are many more groups that have been given a voice in society. That’s why it rubs like that. Society has become so polarized that I’m going the other way with my columns. I’m looking for connection, and if it can’t be found, then at least understanding. I try to include people in my reasoning in such a way that they start thinking – in my opinion, a firm opinion does not move anything.”