•3 min read
Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ) was forced to cut short her high-altitude training camp on Tenerife's Mount Teide on Tuesday, March 24, after Storm Therese prompted authorities to close the national park and mountain access roads, one week before her cobbled Classics campaign begins.
Vollering posted on her Instagram story that she and her teammates were told to leave the island immediately. "We had a last good training bit then we came home and got the news we needed to leave immediately.." she wrote.
"Apparently another storm is on its way and they closed all the roads again, then we would be stuck on the mountain."
The abrupt departure follows more than a week of escalating emergency measures across Tenerife, with closures first taking effect on March 18 as Storm Therese bore down on the Canary Islands. Remco Evenepoel was temporarily stranded on the island, ahead of the Volta a Catalunya.
Mount Teide is one of the most popular altitude training bases in professional cycling. Riders use the steady, predictable climbs above 2,000 metres to build aerobic fitness ahead of major racing blocks. Once road access to the national park closes and snow and high winds arrive at altitude, the core training environment disappears entirely.
Tenerife's island government activated its emergency plan (PEIN) on March 18, closing Teide National Park from 1,800 metres altitude due to snow, shutting forest tracks and hiking trails, and suspending all outdoor events. Spain's national weather service AEMET issued orange warnings for the island, with BBC Weather reporting wind gusts of 90–100 km/h in northern areas and rainfall warnings of up to 100 mm in 12 hours in parts of the south.
Although the Cabildo downgraded the emergency level from alert to pre-alert on March 22 as conditions eased, key restrictions remained in place. Access to Teide National Park, forest tracks and recreational mountain areas stayed closed. That meant Vollering's camp, centred on the high mountain, could not simply resume at reduced intensity.
Travel disruption compounded the problem. Flight cancellations and diversions affected Tenerife's airports during the storm's worst days, with BBC Weather and ITV News both reporting cancelled flights and persistent travel warnings through the weekend of March 20–22. For a team trying to manage recovery schedules and race logistics, staying on an island with unreliable transport links added an extra layer of risk.
Vollering is set to race Dwars door Vlaanderen Women on April 1, and is also listed for the Tour of Flanders on April 5. That two-race cobbled sequence is one of the defining blocks of the women's spring calendar, and the Teide camp was positioned to feed directly into it.
Vollering is now set to return to mainland Europe ahead of the Dwars door Vlaanderen start in Waregem. The Tour of Flanders follows four days later on April 5.
Cover image - Vollering at Liège – Bastogne - Liège Femmes, where she is set to return in 2026 - credit: A.S.O./Thomas Maheux
