With his victory in the Omloop, Dylan van Baarle immediately makes his transfer to Jumbo-Visma true

In an enormous warehouse on the edge of the center of Ghent, there is an excited atmosphere on an early Saturday morning. Parents tell their children to watch, grown men with cycling jerseys in their hands quicken their pace as they enter the shed. Everyone is moving in the same direction: towards the team buses of the 25 cycling teams that are neatly lined up, like museum pieces at an exhibition.

Soon, just outside the shed, the riders will be shot away for the start of the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the first race of the Flemish cycling season and the unofficial opening of the classic spring, with major one-day races such as Milan-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris- Roubaix and Liège-Bastogne-Liège ahead. Hence all the excitement; here the riders who have switched teams can be admired for the first time in their new jersey. This is where the big names in cycling meet for the first time this year. Races have already been held in the Middle East, among others, “but now it’s really going to start,” as Jumbo-Visma director Richard Plugge puts it.

The bus of the Dutch top team is set up a little behind the scenes in the shed, almost furthest from the start of all teams. But that says nothing about the ambitions that Jumbo-Visma has for the spring classics. “This year we have more focus on achieving good results in the spring,” says sports director Arthur van Dongen.

Jumbo-Visma has developed into the best cycling team in the world in recent years, with last year’s victory in the Tour de France as the highlight for the time being. In the same period, success in the spring always had to come from one man: Wout van Aert. The Belgian has won the Omloop (2022), Gent-Wevelgem (2021) and Milan-Sanremo (2020) in the last three years. But the team is still missing the win in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix – Plugge is such a fan of the latter that the driveway of his house is made of cobblestones.

The team has started the spring “with a broader and stronger team” than in previous years, says sports director Van Dongen prior to the start in Ghent. “We have a number of main goals every year and this year one of them is to win the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix. Otherwise the spring will not be successful.”

Signboards

Jumbo-Visma’s urge to prove can be seen in the arrival of Dylan van Baarle, the Dutch rider who has developed into a classics specialist in recent years, with last year’s victory in Paris-Roubaix as the crowning achievement. The Omloop Het Nieuwsblad is the first race for Van Baarle (30) for his new team. After being presented to the Flemish public on stage, he picks at his cycling shirt. “I’ve been getting used to it for two months now, and it feels good,” he says.

Until 2013, Van Baarle was part of the Rabobank training team, the predecessor of Jumbo-Visma. He then drove for nine years in foreign service, the last five of which for the British Ineos (formerly Team Sky). The fact that Jumbo-Visma wanted to focus more on the spring classics was an important reason for Van Baarle to switch, he said at the team presentation in December. “They have been very vocal that spring will be one of the main goals. That was something very close to my heart and it certainly played a part in the decision to come here. At Ineos, it was more of a secondary concern.”

Together with Van Aert, Van Baarle is the signboard of the Dutch team this spring. In addition, Jumbo-Visma has two more men in the Belgian Tiesj Benoot and the Frenchman Christophe Laporte who have shown in the past that they can compete for the win in classics. Van Baarle is not afraid that the strength of the selection will be at the expense of his own chances, he says. “If you can drive a final with four men, then that is an ideal scenario. When I drive away, they don’t go after me anymore.”

With all those big names, it is important to make very clear agreements about the division of roles, says sports director Van Dongen. “It means a lot of talking all winter long. When we had a last team meeting yesterday, as with every team before a race, no one in our bus heard anything new. The division of roles has been fixed for a long time.”

To leave nothing to chance, Jumbo-Visma works with color codes: before the start, each rider is given a color that indicates his role in the race. Green is for the helpers, red for the absolute leader and yellow gets a rider if he has a free role.

On Saturday, three of the four leaders for the spring will be at the start: Van Baarle, Benoot and Laporte. All three have been given the color yellow, and can therefore go for their own chances. They want to win. In November, the team explored the course and tested which material they can best use on the Flemish cobblestones.

At the same time, prior to the start, Van Dongen calls the Omloop a test case to try out new tactics. He also makes a comment on the ambitions of his team. “We want to win everywhere we participate, but the riders have just come from an altitude training. We know from experience that for these kinds of races you normally need some course rhythm. Today offers a great opportunity to see how our plan works out. The theory may be great, but the tactics still have to prove themselves in practice.”

Also read this interview with the Dutch rider Demi Vollering: ‘Being a leader is much more complicated than people think’

Time trial to the finish line

At about halfway through the Omloop, Jumbo-Visma shows its strength and ambition for the first time: six men take the lead and accelerate, so that the peloton immediately breaks in two. It is part of a plan to make the course as hard as possible early on. Then the riders of the yellow-black team took the lead one by one, dragging the peloton with them through the undulating landscape.

At 38 kilometers from the finish, Van Baarle attacks, full over his teammate Nathan Van Hooydonck. He gets three riders along, but they fall off one by one on the way to the finish. He sits alone on the Chapel Wall. With 16 kilometers to go, Van Baarle bends even deeper over his handlebars and starts a time trial to the line.

Behind him, his teammates play the tactical game perfectly: the group of pursuers comes to twelve seconds, but Laporte, called “a bag of ballast” on Belgian TV, does not take too many steps and thus disrupts the last attempts to bring back Van Baarle. With a half minute lead, the Dutchman crosses the line solo in Ninove. He cheers and underlines the team logo on his shirt with his hands. Laporte is third a little later.

“Thanks to the boys,” says Van Baarle beaming. He had heard nothing of the work that the team behind him was doing through a crackling earpiece, “but I knew they would check my flight, that was the tactic.” He had been quite nervous in recent months about his transfer to a new team, says Van Baarle. “I got so many impulses: new training, new food, new material, new tactics. I didn’t know if I would master it right away, but I showed that I can do this.”

In general, the race went according to plan, sports director Van Dongen notes with satisfaction at the team bus. “We wanted to make the race hard early and then constantly create a surplus. We succeeded. It surprised me that everyone was so strong. But we just have a very good team and we had invested a lot of time in this.” He understands that Jumbo-Visma has now immediately maneuvered itself into the favorite role for the rest of the classic season. “We have even more goals this period, and we are not underestimating anyone, but the way we acted today, I think we are the team.”