“I’m fairly chaotic,” says Jolien Vermeylen, laughing as she does.
It’s a word that comes up often in conversation with her and, in fairness, she makes a compelling case. Yet it also seems to be only one side of the coin.
From the first steps of Vermeylen’s career to the elite level at which she now finds herself, the chaos has been seemingly ever-present. Lying beneath it, though, is a quiet determination.
At the end of 2022, she tackled the autumn swing of WTCS races in Cagliari, Bermuda and Abu Dhabi. Heading into the races, she only had three WTCS starts to her name but she was intent upon learning the level.
“I didn’t think of the fact that I would get almost zero points towards my Olympic ranking. Then at the beginning of the year I wanted to do the New Plymouth World Cup but that was too expensive. Then the race I was going to do got cancelled so I didn’t get on the start list for Yokohama and then I got a little injured. When I could race, the whole first year of Olympic qualification was already over.”
Some standout performances like a silver medal at the Bergen World Cup in August 2022 salvaged her ranking, although it was not where she had hoped it would be. Nevertheless, the determination to expose herself to a new level and find out what it would take to improve is what strikes most.
Her first brush with the sport had a similar ring to it.
“I was on a holiday in Corfu when I was a swimmer,” explains Vermeylen. “It was the off-season in August and I was reading the Brownlees’ book. That’s when I came up with the idea. I thought ‘I can swim, I want to go for a run’ and I ran 4km every day there. I don’t even know if I had running shoes with me; maybe I did them in my sandals. At the end of the month there was a triathlon not far from our home so I did my first triathlon.”
Her dad bought her first bike – “if it hadn’t been red I wouldn’t have done triathlon” – and she was away, although it would be some time until she fully embarked on her triathlon journey.
After a slightly bruising end to 2022, she found herself scrambling to enter European Cups to improve her ranking and get back into top-level races. First came the European Cup in Caorle, where she finished 4th. Then she signed up to race in Holten.
“I did the Holten European Cup only because I thought I would never get on the Paris (Test Event) start list. The WTCS was coming and my best result was 32nd which wouldn’t make many points, so I really needed to do a European Cup.”
She duly won the race, beating WTCS gold medallist Rachel Klamer in a late attack. Then she showed up at WTCS Hamburg and finished 9th in a fantastic performance. Having expected no points from WTCS Hamburg, it has since stood as her most valuable result towards her Olympic ranking.
“I’m quite good at that format,” she offers of the Super Sprint in Hamburg. “As a swimmer I can swim lots of races in one weekend.”
Vermeylen swam for one further year after her initial taste of triathlon from her Corfu holiday and wanted to go to the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games. However sickness prevented her from training properly and she did not qualify. The European Championships were another target of hers. While she swam under the qualification times, “I always swam them at the wrong moments and never at the moment I had to do it”.
From there, she moved on from swimming and settled on triathlon.
“I decided I was just going to train at a sport that I liked. I was not going to train hard, I didn’t want to be good at it. I just wanted to do it for fun, to make friends and do a bit of everything.”
Alongside her new hobby, she worked as a maths teacher for four years.
“I also taught French but I’m not a native speaker so I tried to drop the French but I really loved teaching maths.”
In that time, Vermeylen continued to improve both her cycling and running and soon made her first international starts. A medal followed at the Mediterranean Championships in Alhandra in October 2020, although she quickly adds, “it was during COVID and not a lot of people competed”.
“I never felt like I was strong. My running speed is ok now but you can see me from afar. Even the commentators talk about my special style. I can it the T-Rex run. I love running but I’m still a little scared of the bike as you can see with my magical peloton skills.”
In 2021, she made her WTCS debut in Hamburg and then made a major change.
“I quit my job about two years ago and then for one year had nothing. But I thought if I want to be a good triathlete then it’s all in or nothing. So I went for all in. My parents didn’t like it.”
The move was a risk but Vermeylen was determined to make the most of the opportunity before her in triathlon.
“Then I got better and better,” she says, with a hint of relief.
It may be helpful to flag here that to say she has gotten better is a slight understatement. At this point in time, Vermeylen would be ranked 8th in the Olympic rankings based on points taken only from the second half of Olympic Qualification. For reference, her performances in the first half of the window put her outside the top-50.
A strong case could therefore be made that, based on 2023 form, she is now among the best female triathletes in the world.
Switching coach early in 2022 to Stijn Lievens has paid major dividends. Lievens had coached Vermeylen as a swimmer while she was studying although now their rapport has developed further.
“That made a big difference as this coach believes in me even when I don’t myself.”
Over the course of this summer, her performances have given her plenty of reasons to believe in herself. She claimed individual medals at European Games and the Tiszaujvaros World Cup, a personal best WTCS finish in Hamburg and then followed it up with 12th place at WTCS Sunderland.
To cap it all off, she was part of the Belgian team that won a stunning bronze medal in the relay at the Paris Test Event. Vermeylen is quick to pass off the credit for the relay to her teammates and especially to Claire Michel’s heroic anchor leg.
On the note of the Belgian team, it would be easy to get lost in the race to the Olympic Games. Belgium seem likely to qualify two women, putting Vermeylen up against Michel and Valerie Barthelemy. The competition, though, appears to be of minor concern as the team remains close-knit.
“In the Belgian team chaos is my second name. In Sunderland I got lost on my way to the venue. Then I got a little wound in my finger so it was bleeding. When I finally got to the venue I found our physio and we went through the media area because I was quite late. Then two staff members from the organisers brought me to the athlete area because I was completely lost. So in Paris, the team made me leave the hotel with Valerie (Barthelemy) and Claire (Michel) to make sure I wouldn’t get lost.”
In a fairly brutal schedule this summer, Vermeylen has raced eight times (including relays) in a little under two months. One thing that surpises her is how well she has managed to train between all the races. This weekend, she will tackle yet another event with the Valencia World Cup however her efforts to persuade her coach for more rest were not successful.
“Valencia had a big red cross on my calendar which means ‘I really don’t want to do this’. I don’t know what it is but the bike course does something to my head. It’s such an easy course but still I think it’s really difficult.”
One point to highlight is that Holten was the second race with a big red cross on her calendar and that did not go too badly. Indeed, there has only been one slight hiccup in her preparation.
“I thought it was a Sprint! I found out three days ago and I was already on the start list. I was looking at the map in the athlete guide and it said swim lap 2: 750m. And I thought it was really weird. Why would they state it twice? And then it said bike: 8 laps and I was like no… no, no, no. I’m still not mentally prepared for it but I will be.”
Away from the course, Vermeylen may be chaotic but once she steps onto the start line she is almost a different person as the other side of the coin surfaces. Notwithstanding the surprise of how far she will actually be racing, another big performance can still be expected in Valencia.
After that, she will take on the WTCS Final in Pontevedra. The World Cups in Tangier and Rome will follow before she takes a well-earned break. Whatever comes next, though, seems almost incidental.
“When you do things with your heart, that’s the most important thing,” says Vermeylen, “and I love what I do.”
When it comes to Jolien Vermeylen, then, you might see her looking a little lost at times before races. You might spot her by her distinctive T-Rex run during them. Afterwards, though, there’s a very good chance you will see her on the podium with yet another medal around her neck.
