Tour de France 2023

update 18th September 2023

Team Jumbo-Visma make history – All 3 Grand Tours in the same year!

With Sepp Kuss winning the 2023 Vuelta a España yesterday, and then his Jumbo-Visma teammates winning the other two Grand Tours this year (Primož Roglič won the 2023 Giro d'Italia and Jonas Vingegaard won the 2023 Tour de France), this makes the Dutch Jumbo-Visma team the first to win all three Grand Tours in a single season!

Also worth mentioning, what Jumbo-Visma have just achieved at the Vuelta was also only the second time ever that a single team had 3 of their cyclists finish in the top 3 positions on any major tour! - You would have to go back as far as 1966 when the Spanish Kas-Kaskol team had 3 of their cyclists finish in the top 3 of the Vuelta in that year.

The Dutch Jumbo-Visma team have broken all records this season, which has been widely reported and the cause of many celebrations throughout those major cycling nations.. while here in the UK they gave this 'historical event' about as much attention in the media as all that ‘cycling infrastructure’ the UK Government had promised over ten years ago now during the London Olympics.. and then simply forgot to deliver!

NL text.. samenvatting; Jumbo-Visma heeft historie geschreven door als eerste team ooit alle grote rondes in één jaar te winnen. Na de Giro d’Italia met Primoz Roglic en de Tour de France met Jonas Vingegaard voltooide Sepp Kuss in de Vuelta de trilogie voor de succesvolle Nederlandse ploeg.

Photo credits 2023 Jumbo-Visma: Reuters and Cor Vos/NOS

18th July 2023; Team Jumbo Visma riding high again in this years Tour de France... so for the cycling fans, coming up a summary of those Dutch teams (and bike manufacturers) that have evolved since the 1950's (Gazelle, Frisol, Televizier, PDM, Panasonic, TVM, etc).. how back in the 1960's Gazelle teamed up with different teams to win some of the biggest and most famous bike races.. That Raleigh was actually a Dutch cycling team set up by Peter Post in 1972 when he retired from competing himself, who then under his management went on to win the World Championship in 1978 with Gerrie Knetemann & the TdF in 1980 with Joop Zoetemelk, and then in 1983 when Raleigh was disbanded they would split into two new Dutch teams (Panasonic and Kwantum) of which one later became Jumbo Visma that we know today.. how Dutch bike manufacturer Sparta led the way developing E-Bikes.. more about cycling to school and the workplace.. cycling in the countryside on purpose built cycle paths.. and how they improved their cycling infrastructure dramatically year in year out since the 1970's.. by going Dutch! 😉

more to follow..

Back in the late 1960's... Gazelle and Willem II had a pretty good team. But a lot of people seem to have forgotten that Willem II was actually a cigar maker from Valkenswaard near Eindhoven.. Cigars?? - It seems that back in that era it was not uncommon to see sports teams sponsored by tobacco companies..

Around the same time there was also the Caballero cycling team (Caballero is the Spanish word for knight, but they were in fact a Dutch brand of unfiltered cigarette made at the Caballero-Laurens factory near The Hague that had been a popular brand in the Benelux region since the 1950’s).. Caballero sponsored the cycling team of Jan van der Horst from 1962 until 1972, and along with Gazelle-Willem II both teams participated in the 1970 Tour de France, which was won that year by Eddy Merckx, while Dutch cycling legend Joop Zoetemelk finished 2^nd (in what was his debut tour) while riding then for Belgian team Flandria-Mars. Zoetemelk would go on to win the Tour de France himself ten years later in 1980, but it is also worth mentioning that when he retired from cycling Joop Zoetemelk held the record for starting and finishing the most Tour de France's, by doing this on 16 occasions!! - As a result this will also then mean that he has ridden more km's in a TdF than any other cyclist?

The Caballero-Laurens cycling shirt from the 1970 Tour de France.. note the use of red, white and blue from the Dutch flag, along with the orange..

During the early 1960's there was the Televizier cycling team who had joined forces with Batavus, and included Wim van Est who had previously been the very first Dutchman to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France (he took the jersey on stage 12), and to this day had probably the luckiest escape ever when on the next day of the tour while defending his jersey he went over a cliff with a 300 meter drop, managed to grab hold of saplings growing on the mountainside to break his fall, and then call out for help!! - He was eventually saved by a makeshift rope of inner tubes!?.. It took the team quite some time to tie together every single tire tube they had in order to make a rope that they hoped would reach him. After a great deal of time their 75 meter "rope" reached Van Est and he was able to use the tires to rig together a hoist which he put around his chest under both arms!!! - To remember this event, a monument was placed on the mountain (The Col d'Aubisque) 50 years after the event, on 17 July 2001.

toy model of the Televizier Batavus Team car back in 1966.. it wouldn't be until the late 1980's that PDM would become the first team to turn up at tours with a huge state-of-the-art bus/coach..

During the late 1970's/early 1980's Gazelle also ran the Gazelle Amateur Cycling team which included future well known names like Theo de Rooij (TI Raleigh, Panasonic), Nico Verhoeven (Skala, Superconfex & PDM), Erik Breukink (Panasonic, PDM & ONCE), and the top sprinter Jean-Paul van Poppel (Kwantum, Panasonic & PDM) who ended up winning 22 stages across the 3 Grand Tours!

Frisol - Gazelle was a Dutch professional cycling team that existed from 1973 to 1977 - Its sponsors were the oil trader Frisol and the bicycle manufacturer Gazelle. Its most notable rider was Jan Raas with his win of the 1977 Milan-San Remo, while Jan Raas himself would also cycle for other Dutch teams during the 70/80's (TI Raleigh, Kwantum) and won the Amstel Gold Race, Tour of Flandres, and win the UCI World Championships in 1979 in front of 200,000 spectators! He also ended up winning 10 individual stages in the Tour de France (1977, 1978, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1982 & 1984).. Jan Raas retired from racing in 1985, and then made a natural move into team management when he became sporting director of the Kwantum team.

Speaking of Kwantum... back in the 1980's they had some really good riders (Jelle Nijdam, Hennie Kuiper, Zoetemelk and Raas, etc) and won a lot of races.. and another one of their top riders being none other than Adri van der Poel (the father of current World Champion Cyclo-Cross, Mathieu van der Poel) with Adri himself winning stages in the Tour de France, along with a lot of the one day classics (in fact in 1985 alone, Adri van der Poel won eight of these races!.. making him a household name in the cycling loving countries) - See below, photo from the Product of Holland Expo for Flowers & Plants in 1985.. these were also the days when NL or The Netherlands was still known Worldwide as 'Holland' 😉

So, come Sunday 6th August will his son Mathieu be the new UCI World Champion in the road race between Edinburgh and Glasgow?

DAF Trucks - Gazelle was a cycling team in the early 1980's which was based/registered in Belgium, but their main sponsors were Dutch (DAF Trucks from Eindhoven, and Gazelle Bikes), along with chocolatiers Cote D'Or, and was actually Adri van der Poel's first professional team before he then moved to Kwantum (see above) in 1984. This team also included former Olympic and World Champion Hennie Kuiper, and the emerging Belgian cyclist Eric Vanderaerden.

more to follow..

The 1980's... Kwantum become Superconfex... Peter Post's new Panasonic team make an impact... and the emergence of a brand new Dutch team PDM (Philips) who by the end of that decade had become the coolest team out there on all the major tours!

Also, an update on the forthcoming UCI World Championships to be held here in Scotland (see separate blog posting)... the main events are the elite road races (men's race between Edinburgh and Glasgow on Sunday 6th August 2023, and women's race between Loch Lomond and Glasgow on Sunday 13th August).. so shall we already make a prediction as to who will become the new World Champion?... let's go Dutch again... twice! 😉

For the men's race on 6th August: Mathieu van der Poel

For the women's race on 13th August: Annemiek van Vleuten

more to follow..

update 23rd July: Team Jumbo Visma were victorious in this years Tour de France!

photo credit: Reuters

A more detailed summary to follow.. So now having won both the Giro and Tour de France, the Jumbo Visma team made it clear yesterday that they will also be going for the Vuelta this year that starts on 26th August.. it is not often, in fact it may well be a new record, that a single team ends up winning all three grand tours in a single year!... a Grand Tour Grand Slam so to speak 😊

The Grand Tours in cycling are the three major professional cycling stage races: the Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España. No cyclist has ever won all three Grand Tours in a single year.. and in the past most teams usually just had one leader or main rider, so it could well be the case that with Jumbo Visma having several 'main riders' in their team at the same time.. this could well become a unique year in cycling!

update 22nd August: Team Jumbo Visma have announced their team for the Vuelta which starts this coming Saturday, 26th August.. that 'Grand Tour Grand Slam' is definitely on the cards!

Jumbo-Visma

• Jonas Vingegaard
• Primoz Roglic
• Sepp Kuss
• Wilco Kelderman
• Robert Gesink
• Dylan van Baarle
• Attila Valter
• Jan Tratnik

https://twitter.com/i/status/1...

From Team Jumbo Visma: After winning the Giro d'Italia with Primoz Roglic and the Tour de France with Jonas Vingegaard, Team Jumbo-Visma is aiming to complete a unique trilogy at the Vuelta a España, winning all three grand tours in the same year. "It is an ambitious goal that we dare to declare and for which we can field a very versatile and strong eight-man squad in Spain”, sports director Marc Reef says. "We are ready for anything with this team, and I look forward to starting in Barcelona with these riders.”

update 18th September: Cycling History was made in the year 2023... congratulations to Jumbo Visma for this 'Grand Tour Grand Slam'!!