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I’ve been telling you about some of the various riders who are have been attempting to get spots riding in the Olympic women’s Road Race and ITT next month, and since my last installment, we’ve seen not only the confirmation of which nations get to take how many riders, but we’ve also had our first team announcements. South Africa told us they’ll be taking Ashleigh Moolman, Jo Van De Winkel and Robyn de Groot, but before that, the very first nation to lay their cards of the table were the Dutch, with a team to inspire respect, and maybe even a bit of fear - no wonder they were so confident!

I’ll tell you more about the riders who’ll be representing the Netherlands on the roads below the jump - and because it must have been a particularly hard choice, I’ll tell you about the riders who have had to be left behind…. Really, choosing four out of the huge Dutch talent pool must have been crazy-hard - they have five riders in the top 20 of the current UCI rankings, for goodness’ sake - and their 5th-8th best riders would make a more formidable team than most countries’ 1-4! But there was never any choice about their team leader…. the one and only Marianne Vos!