Team Picnic PostNL reveal leaders and plans for 2025 Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España
Cycling
The newly-named Team Picnic PostNL has hosted their media day today in Calpe and have officially announced the main goals of it's leaders for the 2025 season. Romain Bardet, Fabio Jakobsen, Oscar Onley, Max Poole... We learn where they will be racing in this year's three-week races.
“At the Giro d’Italia we really want to show ourselves as a team and play our part in the race each day. In the GC battle we will aim to race smartly and tactically and continue to assess how the race is shaping up as it progresses, while also having a focus on day results when the opportunities arise," team head coach Rudi Kemna said in a press release.
"We will have Romain [Bardet] who’s taking part in his last Grand Tour as a professional and Max [Poole] as our finishers for those challenging mountain days, while Casper [van Uden] is planned to make his three-week debut and will be supported by a good lead-out train to search for those day results in the sprints.” Bardet will later retire at the Criterium du Dauphiné, and it's likely that both climbers will try to take a stage win during the race.
At the Tour de France, the Dutch team pulled off a tactical masterclass on day 1 last year, with Romain Bardet taking the stage win and yellow jersey supported by Frank van den Broek. Van den Broek and Onley will return in search of stage success whilst the team will look to once again support and back up Fabio Jakobsen who was at the time of his signing expected to be the team's new headliner - but has won only one race last year.
“Topping 2024’s Tour de France will be hard, but we will once more head to the race with a focus primarily on going for stage results. In the more hilly and mountainous terrain we will have a strong group of attacking options such as the likes of Oscar [Onley] and Frank [van den Broek]".
"We want to make steps with Fabio [Jakobsen] in the earlier part of the season and then aim to head to the Tour de France with confidence, targeting the flat sprints with him as our finisher where he will be supported by the likes of Tobias [Lund Andresen].”
But the team have gone as far as thinking about the Vuelta a España already, where they hope that their British talent Max Poole can become a solid Grand Tour contender. With less competition and specific preparation for it, he could end up becoming a very important rider and also UCI point earner in the final Grand Tour of the season.
“We hope that Max will have learned a lot from the experience gained at the Giro, so with an ideal preparation, we will once more see where we can bring him in the overall standings come the end of the Vuelta. It is also an opportunity for several of our other young talents to make their Grand Tour debut and come into the process of riding a three-week race; where we will look for our chances each day to hunt for the best result possible," Kemna concluded.
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GC aims in the @giroditalia and stage hunting @letourdefrance with our Men’s program🥇
— Team Picnic PostNL (@picnicpostnl) January 6, 2025
With plenty of sprinting prowess in our ranks in 2025 we want to build on last year and go for even more top results in races throughout the year. Alongside that we’ll continue to grow our… pic.twitter.com/Z6arUk1sam
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