Amalie Dideriksen heads into the new season looking to put a tough 2019 campaign completely behind her. A year after winning the Danish Championships road race and earning one podium finish, consistency and a return to the challenge of winning are the main goals for this Danish athlete.

The 23-year-old has yet to return to the heights of 2016, when she won the World Championships road race in Qatar, and admitted that she has struggled with external expectations since then. But now in her sixth season with Boels Dolmans, Dideriksen said that despite the disappointments, there are positives to be taken from last year.

"Last year was a difficult year for me. I wanted to achieve more, but I didn't want to. In the end I would have liked to have achieved more, but I think I was able to continue my development and I will just take advantage of that starting in 2019."

"I've done all the training and I feel like I'm still at my level. I just hope that I can quickly reach the potential that I think I have.

"I want to win this season. I can't say which one yet because I don't know where it will go. But my main goal is to get to the top in the finals and play more consistently."

Dideriksen could not name one specific issue that set her back during the season, saying, "I just missed that last little edge that makes all the difference at the top of professional sports."

A little over three years have passed since the biggest moment of her career to date, when she overtook Kirsten Wilde in Qatar to win the rainbow jersey; the youngest World Championship winner since Marianne Vos in 2006, she was only 20 at the time.

"It was a big surprise for me and for everyone else," she said. Suddenly people expected me to be on the podium in every race."

"It was certainly difficult to accept myself. There is still a lot of hard work to be done to get to the top of the race and that is what I am doing.

"It was a big change for me because after becoming world champion, all of a sudden I got a lot of attention and it was really hard not to always live up to everyone's expectations.

"That made me realize that life is not like that. So instead of trying to meet everyone's expectations, I started focusing on achieving my own goals."

If she is finding it hard to cope with the rising expectations since her win, Dideriksen no doubt has teammates who have had similar experiences. Anna van der Breggen and Chantal Black, two former world champions, and current European champion Amy Peters.

The democratic principles of the team will also help. In Boels, players who are not in good shape will not be relegated to a permanent domestique position.

"I think it's important to give everyone a chance and an opportunity. 'I'm very happy that players like Anna, Chantal and Amy want that. If they want to, they can compete in all the races." [27] [28] "I think it makes a good group that the girls are willing to sacrifice their own chances. I really like how it brings everyone together."