Guess who’s back: Anna van der Breggen scouts the World Championship course in Rwanda

Van der Breggen, who was world road race champion in 2018 (Innsbruck) and 2020 (Imola), has already traveled to Rwanda to scout the course. On Instagram, she shared footage of the bustling streets of Kigali, the epicenter of the 2025 World Road Cycling Championships. This will mark the first time the World Championships are held on the African continent.

The Dutch rider, who in recent seasons worked as a sports director for her team SD Worx-Protime, was accompanied in Rwanda by Koos Moerenhout, the Dutch national coach for the men's division, and Wilbert Broekhuizen, the technical director of the Royal Dutch Cycling Union. Laurens ten Dam, the newly appointed women’s national coach, was not there.

It’s entirely possible that Ten Dam will have multiple team leaders to choose from for next season’s World Championships. The course in Rwanda features significant elevation gains and high-altitude sections, which are typically a perfect fit for Demi Vollering, who starred at the World Championships in Zurich this past September.

Following that race and some earlier missteps, criticism of the Dutch women’s team and former national coach Loes Gunnewijk increased. This led to the responsibility falling to Ten Dam to repair the team’s dynamics. Van der Breggen herself has experienced disappointing performances with the Dutch women’s team in the past, such as the controversial road race at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. She ended her career at the World Championships in Leuven in Belgium that same year, where things also didn’t go smoothly.