With Jonas Vingegaard and Matteo Jorgenson, Visma-Lease a Bike reached the top spot in both Tirreno-Adriatico and Paris-Nice. The American in particular rose above himself. How does the Dutch team manage to mold riders into the best versions of themselves? Sporza Daily went looking for the answer.
As a rider, a transfer to Visma-Lease a Bike seems like a masterstroke to get the most out of your career.
Just look at Christophe Laporte, who grew from an outsider (at Cofidis) into a top rider in the classics.
Matteo Jorgenson is also riding better than ever with a near win in the Omloop and the overall victory in Paris-Nice last weekend.
What does Visma-Lease a Bike do so much better than the other teams?
“According to Matteo Jorgenson himself, they do everything better,” says Dutch cycling columnist Thijs Zonneveld.
“Last year, Jorgenson had to pay for his altitude internships and training camps at Movistar himself and had to reinvest his own salary to tinker with his aerodynamics.”
“At Visma-Lease a Bike, the team arranges all that for him. So it actually makes perfect sense for such a rider to take another step forward.”
Jorgenson’s ex-team Movistar must have been scratching their heads last weekend.
Thijs Zonneveld
Logic that also surprises Zonneveld.
“On the one hand, we can say that Visma has done everything well, but on the other hand, I am sometimes surprised at how poorly the other teams are doing.”
“At Movistar (Jorgenson’s former team) they will now be scratching their heads and thinking: “Have we gotten enough out of that boy in recent years?”
Think about everything
Organizing altitude training for the riders as a team is of course not the only ingredient in the yellow-black recipe for success.
“Nothing is left to chance. Everything is thought about,” says Nathan Van Hooydonck, a rider with the Dutch formation until last year.
“When should you lose weight? When is the best time to do an altitude training camp? When should you take rest? These are all things that the team thinks carefully about.”
“Everything is monitored very carefully. I think that makes the biggest difference in the bigger picture.”
Correct transfer strategy
In addition to guidance, transfer policy is also an important link in the team’s success.
“Visma-Lease a Bike succeeds in recruiting riders at the right time in their career,” says Van Hooydonck.
Zonneveld agrees: “They look for physically strong riders from other teams with whom they think they can get much more out of it.”
Laporte is the textbook example of this. “When he rode for Cofidis, the then Jumbo team saw power traffic jams from Laporte in time trials.”
“The Jumbo team then said to Laporte: “If you had driven those wattages with our team, you would have won those time trials with our guidance.”
“If you can say that to a rider and it is actually the case (that Laporte has started winning time trials since his switch), then it naturally reflects enormously on your team and on other riders.”
And so a new fleet of riders is eager to go to Visma-Lease a Bike.
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2024-03-11 16:13:28
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