Dutch cycling is becoming increasingly international. Last year, ten Dutch riders represented nine teams at the start of the Tour de France. On Saturday, July 1, there may be 14 in Bilbao for no less than 12 of the 22 participating teams.
Not all tour selections are known, so numbers can still change, but it’s clear that a professional Dutch cyclist can seemingly thrive anywhere. And the twelve teams that the fourteen teams will lead from Kazakhstan and Bahrain to Australia, America and Europe (Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands).
The cycling world in the Netherlands seems to be just as open as the country’s economy with riders known internationally as the Dutch Entrepreneurs: they know what they want, what they can do and what they still have to learn.
‘Servants’
And they know their place: the majority of the Dutch national team has one possible serving role. Or helping the Dutchman pull a sprint for a teammate who wants to win a potential sprint after a flat stage. Or the role is to assist the leader in hilly stages and mountain stages. Consider experienced climber Wout Poels from Bahrain.
The same carrot hangs for all the assistants: if the course develops towards it, you can go for a stage win. Recognizing the right moment for this has yielded plenty of touring runs for Lidl-Trek veteran Bauke Mollema.
In pursuit of your own opportunities, Mike Teunissen is a striking example of this. The 30-year-old Interarché-Circus-Wanty driver, who is starting his fourth Tour, accidentally won the first stage of the 2019 Tour and was thus allowed to wear the yellow jersey, the Netherlands’ first in thirty years.
Teunissen should have run sprints with Dylan Groenewegen, but he fell at his most extreme. This year he has to guide his skipper Beniam Jeremiah, making his Tour debut, through the frantic pace without damage.
Debut on tour Elmar Reynders
Groenewegen is also there again. Last year, Australian sprinter Jaico Ela won a Tour stage for the fifth time. He secured his compatriot who would take a seat on the Gronewigen express, as Theunessen had done four years earlier: Elmar Reynders.
This Drent is already 31 years old, but this year he will be riding at the highest level of the WorldTour for the first time. Therefore, he will also make his Tour debut, just like Lars van den Berg (25) with French Groupama-FDJ and reigning Dutch champion Pascal Einkorn (26) with Belgian Lotto Dstny.
Groenewegen will inevitably enter the sprint battle with compatriot Cees Bol of Astana and Fabio Jacobsen, who is back better than ever after his near-fatal fall due to Amsterdam – he won the first stage of the Tour after last year’s opening time trial. Jacobsen would be eager to repeat, because after this season his role at QuickStep is over. For the 2024 Tour, team boss Patrick Lefebvre plans to bring in seven riders who will all be employed with one goal: to win the Remco Evenepoel Tour.
Jacobsen will be recognized on the Tour in the white and blue jersey of the European champions. He won this title in part thanks to the Dutchman whom experts call “the best captain in the world”: Danny van Poppel. He placed his compatriot perfectly in August at the European Championships in Munich. Elated, Jacobsen crossed the line with Van Poppel behind him, his arms also raised.
Jumbo Visma
Bora-Hansgrohe’s expert runner will help young Belgian Jordi Meeus on this tour, his fifth. But Van Poppel is so good at pushing forward that we shouldn’t be surprised when he takes the stage victory himself.
Just like Jayco, the Dutch Jumbo-Visma team has several Dutch people in its Tour pick: Paris-Roubaix winner Dylan van Baarle and Tour rider Wilco Kelderman. The other team riding under the Dutch flag, Team DSM-Firmenich, is fielding one Dutch rider: 25-year-old Nils Eckoff will start his third Tour de France.
As in previous years, it was Mathieu van der Poel of Alpecin Dekonnink that caught the attention of the Dutch delegation. The all-rounder suffered a Tour failure in 2022, but is now in the same great form he was in 2021 when he rode his knee yellow for six days.
There are chances for Van der Poel in the first stage of the Tour of the Hills, Bilbao, for the leader’s seventh yellow jersey. It is possible that he himself will make sure that the viewer can easily identify him on July 1st. Van der Poel wants to claim his third national title next Sunday and so rides the Tour in red, white and blue. That should help, since the blue of his team’s kit is barely distinguishable from the color of at least three other teams.
About the author
Describes Robert Gebbs De Volkskrant about cycling and Formula 1. He was a correspondent in Asia, writing about economics and winning the De Tegel Prize for Journalism as a political correspondent.
