After months of reflection, the former WMX champion will be back behind the gate for the MXGP of Arnhem after announcing her retirement last year.
The Dutchwoman became champion for the first time in her career in 2022 after several years reaping silver and bronze medals. Unfortunately, a year later she suffered a serious tibia and fibula injury at the Grand Prix of Villars Sos-Écot (France), which months later led to her decision to retire from the paddocks.
After a long time of reflection and work, and motivated by good results in local races, van de Ven will return for one last Grand Prix, that of Arnhem, on August 17 and 18, with the goal of saying goodbye in the best possible way in front of her public.
“After that retirement, I started thinking like, is this my life now or did I make the wrong decision? And there was only one way to find out and that was that I started riding again and I started to do some training. But at some point, I came home with our van with my boyfriend from the local race and I felt so good that day. I said to him, what if we do it one more time and prepare ourselves for like a couple of months. We do some serious training, we prepare the bikes and we just go there to have fun. Like how it started. I found my body is not really 100% to do this anymore. I knew this, that’s the reason why I retired. But at some point you think, I had some rest, probably I feel better now. When I go training in Lommel, I need three days on my back to recover from that.“
