Annemiek shares her personal story of falling down and getting back up, taking her audience through the mental and physical challenges she faced throughout her career. With emotion, energy and authenticity, she shows how to get the best out of yourself, a team and an organisation.
Using photos and video footage from her cycling career, she shares the extreme highs, deep lows and lessons that helped her come back stronger time and again.
Themes in her presentations
- Accept, Adapt, Move OnDon’t waste energy on things you cannot change. Instead, quickly shift your focus to what is still possible.
- Ownership & goal setting
How do you stay proactive, take responsibility for your own results and work towards your goals with complete focus?
- Dealing with setbacks & resilience
Annemiek shows how mental challenges, serious injuries and professional frustrations can be turned into renewed motivation.
- Teamwork & #GekPlan
How do you dare to think outside the box together as a team and achieve something that may initially seem almost impossible?
Cycling career
Annemiek van Vleuten (1982) is a former Dutch professional cyclist and is regarded as one of the most successful female cyclists of all time. During her career, she achieved 104 professional victories and became a four-time world champion.
She claimed the 2019 road world title after a legendary 105-kilometre solo attack. At the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021, she won gold in the individual time trial and silver in the road race.
In 2022, she made cycling history once again: in a single year, she won the Tour de France, Giro and Vuelta, and became world champion while riding with a broken elbow.
Her career was not defined by success alone. During the Olympic road race in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, Annemiek was on course for gold when she suffered a serious crash just ten kilometres from the finish. What felt like an absolute low point at the time ultimately became the starting point of her best years as an elite athlete.
Performance mentor and coach
Annemiek retired from professional cycling at the end of 2023. Today, she works as a performance mentor and coach for riders on a professional cycling team and as a cycling analyst for NOS Sport and Eurosport.
She is also involved with NOC*NSF as an experiential expert within the Performance Behaviour and Mental Health team.
In May 2026, her biography Annemiek van Vleuten. Falling, Getting Back Up and the Drive to Improve was published.
