Who Is Fem van Empel? From Brabant Football to Three Cyclocross World Titles

Fem van Empel is the Dutch cyclo-cross champion who made the elite women’s race look solved, then stepped off the bike because the joy had gone. Three consecutive world titles. Three consecutive European titles. Fifty elite wins before she turned 24. On 17 September 2026 she signed for FDJ United-SUEZ, effective immediately, after nearly a year away. If you are asking who is Fem van Empel, that is the short answer. The rest is how a Brabant footballer got there, and what winning that fast cost.

Latest Fem van Empel coverage

CFP does not yet keep a dedicated rider hub for van Empel. The dated record on this site is the 2026–2027 cyclocross season preview, written while she was still paused, and the wire items on her FDJ signing: Fem van Empel joins FDJ United-Suez immediately and Fem van Empel returns as teammate of Demi Vollering.

Who is Fem van Empel, and where is she from?

She was born on 3 September 2002 in ’s-Hertogenbosch, in the Dutch province of North Brabant, and grew up in nearby Sint-Michielsgestel. She is 1.73 m and about 58 kg. The cycling was already in the house. Her father, Jean-Paul van Empel, raced cyclo-cross. Her uncle Ad founded the bike brand Empella Fietsen. Her cousin Micki van Empel rode professionally, including for Bart Wellens’s Belgian squad. She could ride without training wheels at three.

The first sport she chose was football. At six she joined the boys’ team at RKSV Sint-Michielsgestel. She later moved to RKSV Nuenen, played as a striker, and talked about lining up one day for Bayern Munich. She joined Wielervereniging Schijndel in 2010 and rode her first road race on 7 July 2010 in Mierlo-Hout, finishing 13th. For years the two sports ran in parallel. The family was already living in a van to races. The football was the dream she named out loud.

How did a footballer become a cyclocross champion?

In 2019 her parents asked her to choose. Five football sessions and a cyclo-cross calendar in the same week was no longer a family schedule they could carry. She picked the bike. On 10 November 2019 she stopped football. In her last match she scored twice. Jean-Paul later told NU.nl that her teammates went out at night and danced on the bar after games, and that she could not live with that. She wanted people around her who lived for the sport the way she did.

That same month Jean-Paul messaged Aschwin van Oorschot, who had coached cousin Micki, and asked him to take Fem on. Van Oorschot has said he turned a footballer into a cyclo-cross rider in a few years. Two months after she quit football she was third at the Dutch junior cyclo-cross championships, behind Shirin van Anrooij and Puck Pieterse — the two riders who would form, with her, the next Dutch generation in the mud. She finished fifth at the 2020 junior world championships. In 2020 she signed with the Belgian cyclo-cross team Pauwels Sauzen–Bingoal, still a teenager.

In January 2021, at 18, she won the under-23 world title in Ostend. Coverage at the time called her the youngest cyclo-cross star of that rank since Marianne Vos in 2004. The next winter confirmed it was not a one-day. In Val di Sole she beat Vos on snow and became the youngest World Cup winner since Vos herself. She won again in Flamanville. At the 2022 worlds in Fayetteville she was in the fight for the under-23 rainbow jersey until she clipped wheels with van Anrooij on the last lap. Pieterse won. Van Empel took bronze. On the road that summer she won bronze in the under-23 European road race, 11 seconds behind van Anrooij.

How many world titles does Fem van Empel have?

Three elite cyclo-cross world titles, won in a row. Hoogerheide on 4 February 2023, ahead of Pieterse and Lucinda Brand. Tábor on 3 February 2024. Liévin on 1 February 2025, after a last-lap duel with Brand. The Netherlands also won the mixed team relay at Hoogerheide in 2023. She had already been under-23 world champion in 2021. That is four rainbow jerseys in five winters if you count the relay, and three elite individual titles before her 23rd birthday.

The 2022–23 season was the one that moved her from prospect to the rider the winter ran through. She was stepped up from the under-23s to the elite European Championships in Namur and won at 20. She then took the World Cup overall — seven rounds, including Waterloo, Fayetteville, Tábor, Maasmechelen, Antwerp, Dublin and Benidorm — and the X²O Badkamers Trophy. Jumbo-Visma, later Visma | Lease a Bike, signed her from 1 January 2023. She had considered SD Worx as well. In December 2023 the team announced she had extended alongside Jonas Vingegaard and Sepp Kuss. That contract did not survive the second pause. On the road in 2023 she finished 11th at the Giro Donne and won stage 3 of the Tour de l’Avenir Femmes.

A week after Hoogerheide she raced Lille in the rainbow jersey for the first time, won, and celebrated lying on the saddle with arms outstretched — a Tom Pidcock-style Superwoman. “It is something different,” she said. The nickname SuperFem stuck. Pidcock, whom we profiled here, had done the same pose after his own world title. Van Empel was 20, already world champion, and still treating the finish line as a place you could play.

The 2023–24 winter was more one-sided still. She won her first eleven races of the season. Combined with five wins to close the previous winter, that made a 16-race elite winning streak. She retained the European title in Pontchâteau and the world title in Tábor, then closed with 19 wins from 21 races and a second X²O Trophy. Career elite cyclo-cross wins stood at 37 at the end of that season.

In 2024–25 she completed the hat-trick: European champion in Pontevedra, world champion in Liévin, plus a third straight Koppenbergcross, GP Sven Nys, Antwerp World Cup and Benidorm World Cup. She was second in the World Cup overall. On 25 October 2025 she won Exact Cross Heerderstrand for her 50th elite cyclo-cross victory, a handmade sign hidden in her kit. She had already been the designated successor to Vos in the mud. The numbers had caught up with the comparison.

What kind of rider is Fem van Empel?

On a cyclo-cross course she is a front-row starter who can still be there at the bell. Van Oorschot said she added “a touch of Lucinda Brand” to the explosive first-lap punch: the ability to hold a high tempo for a full hour, not only to jump away in the opening minutes. She is technically sure on heavy, muddy courses. The Superprestige, World Cup and X²O rounds that reward bike changes, sand and stairs were her working week, not a curiosity.

The rivalry that defined her was Dutch. Pieterse could win on any surface and still had a mountain-bike summer to protect. Van Anrooij was in the same generation until injury slowed her. Brand, older, was the rider who would not go away, and the one van Empel had to drop in Liévin to keep the rainbow. Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado remained the knife on the right day. Wout van Aert is the men’s version of that completeness: mud, cobbles and a full road calendar. Van Empel’s completeness was real, but the road never paid her the same way the field did.

Her best WorldTour road results were honest rather than famous. Eleventh at the 2023 Giro Donne. Eighth at La Flèche Wallonne Féminine in 2024. Seventeenth at the Tour of Flanders the same spring. She started the Tour de France Femmes in 2024; the Giro that year ended in a crash. She won a stage of the Tour de l’Avenir Femmes. She was a Dutch gravel champion in 2023 and took silver at the European gravel championships in Oud-Heverlee. On the mountain bike she won bronze in the cross-country eliminator at the 2020 world championships in Leuven, silver in the same event at the 2021 Europeans, and the Dutch under-23 cross-country title in 2022. Those are the palmarès of a rider who can handle more than one bike. They are not the palmarès of a Grand Tour leader. The mud is where the wage bill was earned.

Why did Fem van Empel stop racing?

On 20 March 2025, six weeks after the third world title, she posted that she was stepping away. “In recent years, I’ve been on an incredible journey — winning three world and European titles at the highest level of cyclocross. This has required a lot of dedication and daily commitment,” she wrote. “Right now, I’m facing some challenges. After discussing it with the team, we’ve decided that taking a break from racing is the best step for my mental health and well-being.” Visma | Lease a Bike supported the decision. She was pulled from Milan–Sanremo Women.

She returned in autumn 2025, skipping the road and targeting cyclo-cross. She won Nacht van Woerden and Exact Cross Heerde, then climbed off at Koppenbergcross on 1 November. She skipped the European Championships. On 19 December 2025 Visma announced she was pausing her career indefinitely and would leave the team on 1 January 2026.

“During the Koppenbergcross, my body and mind gave a very clear signal,” she said. “I am someone who doesn’t give up easily, but unconsciously, a decision had already formed then. This feels like the right step for me now.” And: “At the moment, both the motivation and the enjoyment I have had in cycling for years are missing. I wanted to be honest and fair about this with the team.” CEO Richard Plugge said the team respected the choice: she had written sports history in those colours, with multiple European and world titles. She had not raced since that DNF. Her last road race was La Choralis Fourmies Féminine in mid-September 2025.

This is not a story about toughness. It is a story about a 22- and 23-year-old who had already done the work of a decade, and then said the work no longer felt like hers. The winter she left behind did not wait. Lucinda Brand won the 2026 elite world title in Hulst. CFP’s cyclocross season preview was written in that gap, and refused to write van Empel into the Ostend start list because the narrative would have been tidier that way.

Where is Fem van Empel now?

In early September 2026 she told WielerFlits she felt healthier and happier than ever, and that a return was still too early to call. Two weeks later FDJ United-SUEZ announced she had joined with immediate effect. Teammates include Tour de France Femmes winner Demi Vollering. General manager Stephen Delcourt framed the signing around recovery of joy, not a results sheet: the priority was that she “rediscover the joy of riding, her smile, and the freedom to fully express herself.” The team grouped her with mountain bikers Anja Grossmann and Kate Courtney as part of a multidisciplinary project. “What comes next will come naturally,” Delcourt said.

NOS reported that director Lars Boom said the first focus would be a return in the field, with a possible later step back to the road. That is not a confirmed cyclo-cross programme and not a confirmed road calendar. Cycling Weekly called it a road reboot. The team’s own words are more careful than that, and they are the ones that count. Van Empel’s line was shorter: “I’m ready for a new adventure and really excited to start again from scratch. Above all, I want to have a lot of fun.”

What does a 24-year-old champion do with a career that already looks finished and unfinished at the same time? The honest answer, today, is: she has a new contract, a team that has said results are not the first job, and no pinned number since 1 November 2025. Do not write her into Ostend because the winter would like her back. Wait until she starts.

Why Fem van Empel matters

She matters because she compressed a Vos-scale cyclo-cross career into three winters and then said the cost was too high. That is rare. Most riders who dominate a discipline spend a decade getting there. Van Empel was elite world champion at 20, a three-time champion at 22, and away from the sport at 23. The Dutch generation around her — Pieterse, Alvarado, Brand — is still racing. The rainbow she wore three times now sits on Brand. The winter still feels the hole.

She also matters because she is one of the few women of her generation who could win on four surfaces and still be, unmistakably, a cyclo-cross rider. The road results never caught the mud. That is not a failure. It is a definition. For how the men’s version of that all-round life looks, read our profile of Wout van Aert. For the winter she is not yet in, read the 2026–2027 cyclocross preview. For the race she started once, in 2024, our guide to how the Tour de France works still holds.

When she pins a number on again, what will you be looking for — the old winning streak, or the smile Delcourt said the team wants back? The record is already secure. Three world titles. Three European titles. Fifty elite wins. A pause that was not a retirement, and a French team that has asked, first, for pleasure. That is who Fem van Empel is, on 18 September 2026: a champion starting from scratch on purpose.

Sources

• FDJ United-SUEZ — official signing, 17 September 2026
• Team Visma | Lease a Bike — career pause, 19 December 2025
• Team Visma | Lease a Bike — Vingegaard, Kuss and van Empel extend, December 2023
• Cyclingnews — March 2025 pause
• English Wikipedia — Fem van Empel palmarès
• Dutch Wikipedia — biography and championship record
• ProCyclingStats — road results and 2026 FDJ listing
• NU.nl — football, family, van Oorschot, 3 February 2023
• WielerFlits — Superwoman finish, Lille, 12 February 2023
• Cyclingnews — 50th elite cyclo-cross win, 25 October 2025
• NOS — FDJ return; Lars Boom on cyclo-cross first
• WielerFlits — 3 September 2026: healthier, no return date

Related reading

• The Mud Is Coming. The Superstars Are Optional.
• Who Is Wout van Aert?
• Who Is Tom Pidcock?
• The Tour de France, Explained
• Rider News

CyclingFreePress is a cycling news digest. This profile summarises reporting from independent cycling outlets, team statements and public race records. Van Empel has signed for FDJ United-SUEZ; no first race has been named. Team, health and calendar details can change. Check official team and UCI sources for the latest.