Visma keen to peak for Tour de France amidst slow start to 2025: "To support Jonas Vingegaard and compete with the one who is the strongest of them all"
Cycling
Team Visma | Lease a Bike haven't had the greatest of starts to the 2025 season. With just four victories claimed, only Jonas Vingegaard and Olav Kooij have managed to celebrate in the opening few months of the campaign. According to the team's Head of Development Robbert de Groot though, there is no concern as of yet, with peaking for the Tour de France later this summer being a key target for many riders.
"It's just a small start. A large part of the team is still working, there are also those who have to start and are working at altitude for future commitments," the Dutchman explains to Bici.Pro. "We can say that the real season for us started with the Belgian classics of the last weekend where we actually expected more . But in general we can be satisfied with our performances in Oman. We also take into account the difficulties experienced by some, for example, Kooij who after the two victories in Oman got sick at the UAE Tour and was unable to perform as well as he is capable of. I think we are at a good level at the moment and we hope to be able to demonstrate this in the next races too."
One man who has started the year in typically winning form is the aforementioned Vingegaard, who took a stage and the general classification at the Volta ao Algarve. "I think we can be happy, very happy. Considering that in view of the Tour we haven't had any high altitude periods for him yet," De Groot says of the Dane. "So yes, we are very happy with his level, I think it's already a good sign also for how it arrived."
As mentioned, the main target for some of the biggest names in Team Visma | Lease a Bike, is peaking for the 2025 Tour de France, in order to best support Vingegaard in his fight to reclaim the Maillot Jaune from Tadej Pogacar. As such, De Groot is not concerned by some notable names not quite being at the level expected at this early point of the year.
"I think this is a very important factor," he concludes. "They are teams at an incredibly high level to support great champions and we have great confidence that our riders can compete with the world champion. So we will do everything we can to create a very, very strong team in these races, to support Jonas, to try to compete with the one who to date is the strongest of them all. But we will all have to be at our best, I think it's going to be a huge spectacle and we want it to be uncertain until the end."
Just in
Play for FREE! Fantasy Paris-Roubaix
Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter today!
Popular news
Latest comments
- Wout Van Aert won a Monument (San Remo, 2020), so he wouldn't be in that article. He might be in an article of riders like Sagan who were truly exceptional and won fewer monuments that expected. As for these two, they've won the last 7 monuments, 10 of the last 12, 15 of the last 20. Merckx and de Vlaeminck weren't that dominant in their era. It really is special the way these two race with such admiration for each other along the way. Rivals, not enemies.RidesHills14-04-2025
- So drunk Belgians will always target MvDP because they are drunk. That can't be right. If drunk Belgians target all other cyclist equally, then it may be reasonable.
KerisVroom14-04-2025 - Nobody cares about this nonsense.
Front24214-04-2025 - Thanks! Hadn’t heard of that word so would have been hard to search very specifically without your input.Mistermaumau14-04-2025
- Ok, that’s this year’s gold medal for classy comments :-)Mistermaumau14-04-2025
- of course it’s predictable. a dad is proud of his son. nothing else matters, and his dad was a celebrated rider in his own right. maybe if people respected the human side of this story, and these people, we would see fewer bidons thrown. lastly as a dad, I appreciate this. a dad should have be given grief for showing pride and love for his child. we need more dads and examples like Adriemij14-04-2025
- i willfully CHOOSE to believe in your theory about greatness being sharpened and driven by greatness, because in my ideal world that’s how i’d wish it to be. in this case, with mathieu in particular, i think the presence of first wout then tadej absolutely drives and consumes him to some degree. he’s a guy who admittedly gets BORED. and when mathieu gets bored he just goes and does something else. he’s very clear about the fact there are a BUNCH of things he just doesn’t really care about, and i think anyone who follows him has a sense that MVDP is here for a GOOD TIME, not a LONG TIME. my hope is that tadej’s greatness will keep mathieu focused and hungry. very sadly, wout no longer fills that role. he may again and i hope he does, but their career trajectories are going in different directions and have been for a few years now. i will be extremely sad for the truly SPECTACULAR van aert if his line MSR win is the only monument trophy on his mantle. at very least i want ONE roubaix cobblestone sitting next to it. he deserves to tell the story when the grandkids ask “why is there a big rock sitting up there, papa?”OCexile14-04-2025
- Why? He is being too hard on himself. No sane person will blame him if he stopped there and then.KerisVroom14-04-2025
- You can find a quick explantion by searching for "finish line camera howtown". The camera only captures the vertical line. The photo that we see is a composite of vertical lines.KerisVroom14-04-2025
- Let us not go off the deep end for a start it us not attempted murder. At most common assault. Country dependent. Yes horrible to see and ob not a real fan of the sport or just a VDP hater. This has been going on for years look at Froome in the TDF and other sports such as football. That is soccer to the North Americans. Let the police do there job and hope the offender gets what is coming to him or even her.paultryan200214-04-2025