"We have certainly taken a step forward" - Visma see plenty of positives from young team at Tour of Oman

At the 2025 Tour of Oman, Team Visma | Lease a Bike took a look towards the future with a young team. If the race is a sign of things to come for the team, the future looks bright too as they secured two stage wins and a top-5 overall finish through Olav Kooij and Cian Uijtdebroeks respectively.

"We came here to sprint twice with Olav and that worked out well. With the new composition of the lead-out, it was always a bit of a wait and see. We had a good start, but a good start is half the battle," reflects Team Visma | Lease a Bike sports director Maarten Wynants in a post-race review to Wielerflits. "We tried to estimate in advance how things would go, to anticipate a bit and to see what the 'exit plan' was. It went the way we had estimated it twice, which is just great. Niklas Behrens is turning out to be a true lead-out man. We knew Dan McLay had experience and he is also transferring that experience well to Niklas and Olav."

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Although the new sprint train of McLay, Behrens and Kooij has seemingly settled together immediately, getting such good cohesion does take a lot of hard work insists Wynants. "We already sat together a few times in December to discuss how we wanted to approach it. It was a matter of giving each other guidelines. Then you still have to apply that theory in practice, you only see that in the competitions. For now it is going very well, but in the UAE Tour we are with more World Teams. We will have to see how it goes there," he explains.

"Dan mainly has to bring experience to the rest. We did a bit of research to see who had done good lead-outs. There weren't twenty good lead-outs on the market either, so we also had to see who was available," continues Wynants. "Our analyses showed that Dan came out on top. Of course, it's always a gamble somewhere, but we did have the impression that it could work with Olav. He (McLay) has an overview, experience and can also convey it well to the youngsters. He is calm, you can see that with Olav outside the races as well. That is already a match. Be careful, it is not necessarily that they both have to have those qualities, but maintaining that calm in the race when it gets really hectic is a crucial factor.”

“Niklas is the opposite of Dan. He is on a real journey of discovery to find out what he can do. He has only been racing for two years and it is great to see him develop so much in such a short time. He absorbs everything well, the feedback you give him, he does something with it. Those are good qualities,” Wynants adds on Behrens. "Olav had less competition here, but you still have to win them. In the past, we often experienced a 'struggle' to win the less crowded races easily. In that respect, we have certainly taken a step forward.”

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