"We really want to win the Tour again" - Jumbo-Visma DS does not hide ambition to repeat 2022 success

Merijn Zeeman, DS of Jumbo-Visma and man who led the Dutch team throughout most of the Tour de France into victory, is not backing down from the responsibilities and has admitted that a big goal for 2023 will be to win the Tour again.

We really want to win the Tour again," Zeeman told Helden Magazine. "And a cobblestone monument, so the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix, because we have never won those. There is also the desire to win the Giro, because that has not yet been achieved.” Brief but clear goals.

Following the team's success this July, winning the race, several stages and both yellow and green jerseys, it is hard to think of any better scenario. After years of building a team and deploying their very best riders to hunt the yellow jersey, Jumbo-Visma have succeeded and will go into 2023 and the defending champion's team - whether that is to include Jonas Vingegaard or not.

The 2023 route will include virtually no regular time-trialing kilometers, which will not favour both it's leaders, but a lot of mountainous stages spread throughout the route. Decisions are yet to be made, but the plans may be quite different then in 2022.

Zeeman has also talked about some of their work in the background, developing riders. “Young riders can grow with us, we can guide them during that entire process. If Tom [Dumoulin] had been on our team at a younger age, we could have guided him better," he said of the Dutch rider, who has recently retired.

“Wilco [Kelderman] has an incredible amount of class in his body and we think there is even more to get out of him," he commented on one of the team's signings for 2023, as the Dutch rider is moving out of BORA-hansgrohe.