Visma Lease-a-Bike Has an Olav Kooij Problem
It may be reductive to say they have a talent problem, so let’s put it like this: Visma Lease-a-Bike has an Olav Kooij problem! What’s going wrong with the development of this up-and-coming sprinter? More importantly, how should it be fixed?
Photo from Andrew @ARG_Flickr (via Flickr)
Olav Kooij: a new superstar with a caveat.
For Visma Lease-a-Bike, talent may never seem like an issue. Their roster is exceptionally deep, even for a World Tour level team, as many riders are even willing to take a pay cut to join the squad. But what happens when VLAB is an issue for the talent themselves?
Olav Kooij is reflecting on his future with VLAB as he enters into a new contract season with them. The Dutch sprinter had a mixed 2024 season, including both Grand Tour stage wins and setbacks from illness and crashes.
Kooij’s development with Visma allowed him to move from a fairly average under-23 rider to genuinely competing against top sprinters in the field. In 2025, he’ll be working with experienced sprinter Dan McLay as his new lead-out man. Now fully recovered from his 2024 injuries, it feels that Kooij can only come back stronger in the coming year!
And Kooij himself remains optimistic about his future prospects… sometimes, it seems, in spite of his own team. In a recent interview, he acknowledges that his team’s focus on Jonas Vingegaard’s general classification ambitions might limit his chances in the immediate future. What does this mean for him? Well, he would like to go to the Tour de France, but he acknowledges that he likely cannot. The team must decide what to do as a group rather than highlight Kooij’s personal ambitions and development.
Is this a problem for Olav Kooij… or Visma Lease-a-Bike?
A perennial problem in pro cycling: talent development.
This situation highlights a common challenge in professional cycling. Teams must balance developing young talent against supporting established champions. Visma’s primary focus on Vingegaard’s Grand Tour goals, including at the Tour de France, will always limit Kooij’s opportunities for growth, especially in the sport’s biggest races.
Kooij’s careful choice of words in interviews about considering “what I want in the future and what’s the best place to be” suggests he’s already thought about whether his long-term career interests might be better served elsewhere. No doubt that for a promising sprinter of Kooij’s caliber, the inability to contest Tour de France sprints during his prime years could be a significant career limitation, especially given the prestige and visibility that Tour stage wins bring to a sprinter’s palmares. Once his prime is gone, it’s gone. And other teams with less focus on GC ambitions might offer Kooij the dedicated sprint support that could help him reach his full potential on France’s biggest stage.
However, those opportunities will seemingly have to wait until after 2025, as Kooij starts another year-long contract with VLAB. It makes the line from the corny skit incorporated into Kooij’s contract announcement — “Olav is going nowhere” — feel a bit ironic!
Hi @olavkooij, we've got a message for you. 💌
— Team Visma | Lease a Bike (@vismaleaseabike) June 21, 2023
Thank you for everything! 🙌 pic.twitter.com/z4lo5Uvf21
Why should Kooij stay with Visma Lease-a-Bike?
Let’s read between the lines a little bit. At the end of the day, Kooij is a talented sprinter on a team that’s absolutely laser-focused on Grand Tour victories with Vingegaard. We can see this situation playing out pretty clearly when it comes to the Tour de France and other GC battles. Kooij is never going to be the top choice.
Embed from Getty ImagesBut what about the rest of the year? Is Kooij really happy with the program opportunities he finds with VLAB? His quotes about program selection are particularly telling: “I just try to get a nice program, find my goals in that.” Uh oh! That sounds diplomatic… probably because it’s exactly the kind of thing you say when you’re making the best of a situation that isn’t ideal. Many of the sprinters he’s facing are getting full team support at the major races, while he’s having to work around Vingegaard’s schedule.
And signing Dan McLay isn’t quite enough to match what other teams are putting into their sprint squad at the current moment. That makes an institutional difference — even just for getting to the finish line first.
So why stick around, even just for 2025? Well, Visma Lease-a-Bike is one of the most professional and well-organized teams in the peloton. They also have a proven track record of developing young talent. Kooij might be looking at this like a long-term investment — sure, he might not get the Tour de France opportunities right now, but he’s learning from the absolute best in the business.
At only 23 years old, Kooij has still got time on his side. His prime could still be years into the future. At that time, he can make the move to a squad that will give him their full support.
There’s also something to be said for stability. In cycling, VLAB is a known quantity. And sometimes the devil you know — even with its limitations — is better than the uncertainty of a new team where you might get more opportunities but less overall support. In some ways, it’s a bit like turning down a starring role in a theater production to take a supporting part in a film from a major studio. You might get less immediate spotlight, but you’re learning what it takes to be among the best and setting yourself up for long-term success.
Up-and-coming GC hopes.
Even with McLay as a new sprint support, Kooij will still need to think about moving on in the coming years. And this is no big loss for VLAB, which will likely continue to focus on GC ambitions for the future. Splitting their energy between sprint, GC, and classics (which, considering Wout van Aert’s lifetime contract with the team, will continue to be a big priority!) only makes each one of those efforts slightly weaker.
For so many reasons, it’s clear that sprinting is not at the top of VLAB’s pile right now. For them, that’s a good thing. Aside from Vingegaard, they boast a veritable stable of new GC talent — some may be ready to step up to the next level, while others may end up moving into other roles.
The biggest asset for VLAB remains their ability to take middle-of-the-pack riders and convert them into top-level talent. Matteo Jorgenson, who VLAB signed from Movistar this past season, is one of their top success stories in recent years. However, newcomer Bart Lemmen also proved to be an unexpected boon for the team in 2024. As a virtual unknown within the sport, he climbed his way into the front group on some of the toughest stages in the Tour de France this year. As a younger rider, he will likely continue to develop in the years to come.
Because of this, it’s often impossible to say which of VLAB’s 2025 changes will have a real impact on their season goals. The next superstar climbing domestique could be hiding in plain sight on their roster!
Since the departure of Primoz Roglic, there’s still a GC leader gap at VLAB that’s not likely to be filled anytime soon. Vingegaard carries the Tour de France hopes for the team, but beyond that, second-tier contenders like Sepp Kuss, Jorgenson, and Cian Uijtdebroeks can step up in a big way to find themselves in contention at the big races.
Jorgenson seems to be taking this opportunity in stride. His overall GC win at Paris-Nice — and his near-miss at the Criterium de Dauphine — showed he has the chops to play with the big boys. Whether VLAB will continue to deploy him as a domestique for Vingegaard or give him his own chances at the other Grand Tours remains to be seen in the future.
Embed from Getty ImagesUijtdebroeks had a more difficult season in 2024. His transfer, coupled with a healthy dose of transfer drama, was one of the most interesting stories in the pro cycling world last winter. But after an underwhelming showing at the 2024 Giro d’Italia, he was plagued by a mysterious health issue at the Vuelta a Espana that left him a DNS on Stage 15. Thankfully, that situation was explained as a treatable lower back issue and not something more serious.
Still, it’s not clear whether this rocky start is simply evidence of growing pains within the new team… or something deeper and more insidious. After all, one of his key motivations for changing teams was access to better equipment, especially for time trials — and every one of his time trial outings this year was worse than what he showed as a member of the Bora-Hansgrohe squad. Whatever the case, he’ll need to compete with other more successful newcomers like Jorgenson for his GC ambitions in the years to come.
None of this is an issue for Visma Lease-a-Bike. They benefit from signing young riders who can develop, but if it doesn’t work out, they have many others waiting. It illustrates how every cyclist must prioritize their own development. That may mean changing priorities, working on new training goals, or even a transfer to shake things up.
For Kooij, Jorgenson, Uijtdebroeks, and more young talents, the future still looks bright. Let’s hope it stays that way!
Do you think Kooij should continue at VLAB past 2025? Why or why not? Let us know your views in the comments or on social media! ★
