Yuli van der Molen had only been home for 20 minutes when the doctor rang and told her to come back to the hospital. The scan results would typically take a week – but hers were urgent, the doctor could tell that at first glance.
It was a cold day in January 2024, and Van der Molen, just 20 at the time, rushed back with her parents. She remembers the diagnosis hitting hard: the doctor explained she had Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare type of blood cancer that affects the body’s lymphatic system, the network of vessels, nodes and organs that form part of the wider immune system. It was stage four – the most advanced.
“I just froze,” the Dutchwoman, a road and track rider from the outskirts of Amsterdam, says. “Then you go into survival mode. I cried a lot. You just go into your own bubble. Hodgkin’s is [one of] the most treatable [types of] cancer – that’s what they told me – but I still needed chemo, and I still needed to lose my hair, and go through that horrible,” her voice trails off, her eyes welling up. “I’m thinking back now to the moment, and I just froze.”
Almost two years on, the memory is still raw. Van der Molen is sitting on a plastic folding chair at the end of a long corridor at London’s Lee Valley Velodrome. It’s the second night of the London 3 Day track competition, and the now 22-year-old is clutching her right arm, having crashed hard in a race two hours before. The dull ache, she says, is nothing compared to what she’s been through.
It was February 2023, almost a year before the diagnosis, when Van der Molen felt the first symptoms. Riding for AG Insurance-NXTG’s under-23 team, she noticed an unusual lack of power in her right leg while at a training camp. Then came the tiredness and restless nights, stricken with throbbing pain and bouts of sweating.
“I never told my parents how bad it really was,” she says. “I went to the hospital a couple of times because, in the middle of the night, I woke up with a lot of pain, crying.” She gestures to her lower back, the source of the agony, and then points to her groin. “Your lymph nodes stop here, so the pain stopped here,” she says. “Someone said, ‘Maybe it’s a hernia.’ Another person said I needed to stretch more. But that wasn’t the problem. Deep down, I thought there was something really wrong with me, but I didn’t know what.”
(Image credit: Alex Whitehead/SWPix)
Training and racing remained a challenge throughout the 2023 season. Of the 27 road race days Van der Molen started that year, she failed to finish 10, and only broke into the top 30 once. Then, in December, she noticed something strange.
“I was feeling here, my collarbone, and I felt a lump. I was like, ‘Shit, what’s this?’” It jogged a memory: more than 20 years before, her mother had experienced the same, and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a similar form of the cancer. “I googled it, saw it was cancer and thought, I think I have that. I went to the doctor, took my shirt off, and she was like,” Van der Molen throws her head back with a wide-eyed look, imitating the doctor’s reaction upon seeing the lump. “That was the morning of the Nationals on the track,” she says. Later that afternoon, she raced and came third in the Madison, before being dropped in the qualifying rounds the next day.
The new year, 2024, began with hospital appointments, blood tests, and eventually the scan that explained everything. When the doctor told Van der Molen she would need chemotherapy, she replied that it wouldn’t be possible: she had a training camp coming up. The reality soon sunk in, however, and her first round was scheduled for Valentine’s Day, less than a month after her diagnosis. The treatment would come in three-day blocks, and she would have to undergo four cycles.
“It was a big room with a lot of beds,” she remembers of the first round. “They put all the bags on the bed, and I was like, OK, that’s all going into my body? At first everything is new, so you don’t feel anything. You’re just thinking, ‘What the f**k? Is this really happening to me?’”
With the help of her mother, Esther, the 20-year-old vlogged the next four months and uploaded the videos to YouTube – the most popular has been viewed more than 11,000 times. The early vlogs showed her diagnosis, rounds of chemo, and the moment she shaved her head in the living room. In one video, Van der Molen injects medicine into her abdomen, before breaking down and crying for five minutes while the camera keeps rolling. Such moments are hard to watch, but optimism is never far away; there’s joy as she tries on wigs, and celebrations as she wears a T-shirt that reads “it’s my last day of chemo”. On 14 May 2024, Van der Molen uploaded a 20-minute vlog set in a lively bar, with pink balloons, a photobooth, and dancing. The video is titled ‘surprise party cancer-free’.
Today, Van der Molen’s YouTube channel stands as a diary of the most harrowing period of her life. How does she feel looking back at the videos? “At first I couldn’t really watch myself,” she says. “Now I can watch and I think, I’m really proud of the person that I am now. I never wanted to have cancer, but cancer made me the person I am today, in a good way. But it sucks that I had to go through it.”
Van der Molen restarted training just weeks after her last round of chemo, determined not to lose any more time in her career. She returned to road racing four months later, at a one-day event in Belgium, but it was too soon – she did not reach the finish line.
The thing with chemo, she says, is that it “destroys a lot”; her energy was drained, her racing motor had vanished, and her stomach was sore from the medicine. She waited until October to begin working with a coach again. She then competed on the track at the Six Days of Rotterdam, and won twice – “that was quite nice and unexpected,” she says. But regaining fitness wouldn’t be the only challenge in her recovery.
“In January, I started having really bad panic attacks,” Van der Molen says. The first one came in Spain, where she had travelled for a month’s warm-weather training. “For the first time, I was away from home again, and the fear of having cancer and never [returning to] being a good rider killed me. I just blocked,” she says. “At first, I didn’t want help because I thought I could make it [go away] myself. But the fear of cancer was every day.”
Van der Molen soon began working with psychologists, and was selected to represent the Netherlands at the under-23 European Track Championships that summer. “The training went really badly and I didn’t want to go anymore because I was so bad,” she says.
The competition would end up yielding the proudest moment of her comeback; she placed fourth in the elimination race, a result that proved her endurance was returning, and then won a silver medal in the Madison with teammate Lisa van Belle. “My family was there, so I was happy to have that moment with my mum and my grandma,” she says, adding with a smile: “I will never show it to my parents, but, in the end, it made me quite emotional.”
(Image credit: Alex Whitehead/SWPix)
Van der Molen’s arms are now decorated with subtle tattoos; on the inside of her right wrist is the word ‘survivor’ in block capitals, while another tattoo, higher up on her left arm, says ‘never give up’. They’re indelible reminders of what she has been through, and the person she has become. “I always say there’s an older version of me, a cancer version, and now a new version of me,” she says. How would she describe that new version? “It’s just different. I can’t really describe what’s different. My mum said that I’m maybe more grown up.”
Two years on, Van der Molen’s cancer is in remission. The fear it may return remains – “I think it’s never going to go away,” she says – but it’s a worry gradually receding as it is outshone by the 22–year-old’s excitement about new opportunities. This season marks a fresh start with British Continental team O’Shea RedChilli Bikes, alongside her increasingly secure place in the Dutch national track squad.
“I will maybe never be a big winner or a big name,” Van der Molen says, but there’s no hint of bitterness in her voice. Two years ago, the future was measured in the intervals between hospital appointments. Today, it is measured in training blocks and target races.
Family view: Niki Terpstra
(Image credit: Watson)
Yuli van der Molen’s uncle is retired pro Niki Terpstra, a former winner of Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders.
The 41-year-old has supported his niece with advice throughout her career. Keen to help out after her diagnosis, Terpstra volunteered last summer at a charity day for Dutch foundation Lymph&Co, where he auctioned off a cycling masterclass. The money raised contributed to the day’s total of more than €77,000. “I didn’t do too much,” Terpstra insists. “I think it’s normal to help your family, but it’s also a good charity.”
Terpstra was also there for Van der Molen’s first track race back, which came just months after her last chemo session in 2024, at an event he helped organise in Alkmaar. What was it like seeing her racing again? “I wouldn’t say emotional, but a little bit,” he says. “It’s exciting to see somebody who was suffering for a while recovering that well and being back in competition.
“Of course, the comeback is going with ups and downs; she’s making two steps forward and one step back, and now she’s made two steps forward with the track season [Van der Molen won the Dutch Derny Championships in November – ed.]. It’s actually incredible.”
Has Terpstra noticed any changes in his niece over the last two years? “I think her character changed,” he says. “I think she’s more willing to suffer at the moment, for her sport. She suffered enough, so the suffering she does now looks like a small effort.”
This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 8th January 2026. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.
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