“He deserves our full support" - Team Visma | Lease a Bike back Olav Kooij for Gent Wevelgem success
Cycling
With the Spring Classics now in full swing, on the 30th of March, Gent Wevelgem is on the cards for the peloton. In their attempts to take victory in Belgium, Team Visma | Lease a Bike are backing their sprint sensation - Olav Kooij.
Kooij secured a very impressive top-10 at Milano-Sanremo last weekend in Italy, his first such finish at a Monument. As such, despite being caught up in a crash at Classic Brugge-De Panne earlier this week, both Visma and Kooij are confident in the 23-year-old Dutchman's chances of getting a good placing at Gent Wevelgem. “There (Milano-Sanremo ed.) he showed that he has taken another step in racing classics this winter. He deserves our full support in Gent Wevelgem," explains Team Visma | Lease a Bike sports director Grischa Niermann in a press release on the team's official website.
"We are going for a sprint with Olav, but in this race every edition is a game between attackers and sprinters," continues Niermann's preview. "A sprint is therefore not a given, but we are going to guide Olav to the finish line as best we can.”
Kooij was part of Visma's team for Gent Wevelgem twelve months ago as Mads Pedersen outsprinted Mathieu van der Poel for the win, eventually coming home in 6th. The Dutchman was also present in 2023, when Visma took victory in a one-two with Christophe Laporte and Wout van Aert. “I think it's a very nice race. Especially the edition that Christophe Laporte won on behalf of our team was brilliant because of our excellent team effort," comments Kooij. "The important thing for us is to be attentive in the hilly area and then see what the situation is towards Wevelgem. Hopefully we can create a situation there in which we can fight for the win.”
Team Visma | Lease a Bike for Gent Wevelgem 2025
Olav Kooij
Tiesj Benoot
Tosh van der Sande
Loe van Belle
Daniel McLay
Julien Vermote
Victor Campenaerts
🇧🇪 #E3SaxoClassic
— Team Visma | Lease a Bike (@vismaleaseabike) March 27, 2025
All set for the cobbled climbs! 🪨💨 pic.twitter.com/b0sUR7AAte
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- Gaio Primus Caesar Roglus, Rome is waiting for you, Imperator :-)).
maria2024202431-03-2025 - And he probably wasn’t even at the limit ;-) Have to wonder how much Mads could catch up if he’d tune his physique to be as sharp as MVDPs’Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- Respect for giving Van Eetvelt credit there.Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- He’s already a star for me for HAVING complained about it, the recent trend having been, let them then try to take advantage by making them sign NDAs ;-)Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- Agreed, but if it was a radio thing then all the riders should have the same story and it would be easy to call anyone out. Kind of surprised this isn’t cleared up half officially afterwards, just like the Alaphilippe divorce, seems like once something spreads on the net it kind of gets accepted that everyone wants to have their own truth so no-one bothers to contest anything that’s verifiable anymore, we all just move on.Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- maybe. what makes that a LITTLE fishy is that they suddenly hit the gas and started hammering it. even mathieu, who i’ve never heard complain about ANYTHING (other than teenage girls waking him up and being spit on by belgians) was pretty hacked off about the race tactics after the split. i think he was upset for what his teammates had to do, not for the fact he ended up isolated as a result.OCexile31-03-2025
- It seems that in E3 it wasn’t legit to criticise teams that « took advantage » because there was no radio communication about the incident so they couldn’t know to slow down. Only one source so far but should be quite easy to verify.Mistermaumau31-03-2025
- mads SMOKED it at ghent! love that guy. he’s just the best interview ever, always smart and hilarious and with a biting intolerance for stupidity. happy for him. just as a secondary thought, consider that mvdp beat THAT version of mads by a full minute at E3 two days ago. the gap between pog/mvdp and even tho other GREAT riders like mads is kinda staggering to comprehend. this is a time in cycling history that’s certainly worth paying attention to while it lasts.OCexile31-03-2025
- i watched the race. jasper and roodhooft have a legit anger about this. alpecin burned everyone to pull it back. they did the SAME THING after the split in E3, burning all their guys and thus leaving mathieu to fend for himself (which worked out ok because van der poel is van der poel, but still…). yeah, christopher and jasper should be a little pissed this time.OCexile30-03-2025
- Mads, Ganna, MvdP, Pogi were all in MSR, and will all be in both RVV and PR, the problem here is Remco because he doesn't race anything. This year because of injuries, before that, no idea why notvappaxbipmv30-03-2025