🎥 "Team leaders" Kooij and Lemmen and Plugge's verdict: first Tour of Holland from Visma | Lease a Bike's perspective

In the mini-documentary, the team shows how it wanted to compete for victory from The Hague to Arnhem. Sprinter Olav Kooij came in the usual sprinters' stage in Dordrecht, but in his last race for Visma | Lease a Bike, he showed how he wanted to go for it in the stage over the VAM mountain to launch Laporte's decisive attack. In the final stage, the team then said goodbye to the fast man.

In addition, the Limburg stage was not left out. The documentary shows how team leaders Arthur van Dongen and Frans Maassen see the peloton come to a halt, after which Kooij and Bart Lemmen take their places in the team car and address their teammates playfully through their earpieces. Well worth watching!

“It was a fantastic race, with a few issues,” Plugge told us on Thursday. “We’ll have a good talk about that. I think Thijs Rondhuis put it well, and I completely agree with him that it’s bizarre that there is so little police escort for cycling.”

“The format was right. The start in the dark was really cool, and the laps on the VAM mountain and in Arnhem were also very cool. You can see in Montmartre how many spectators turn up,” he said, referring to the “revamped” final stage of the Tour. ‘That is, of course, the future of cycling: because of the crowds, safety, and because it is becoming more difficult to close roads for hours on end everywhere.’

“It's also much more fun to invite guests and sponsors because they get to see the riders seven or eight times instead of just once,” Plugge explains. “That was the idea behind it, and they did a great job, with the caveat that there is still work to be done ahead of next year.”

“TIG Sports did a great job,” says the team manager of Visma | Lease a Bike about the organization. “You need people who dare to think outside the box and aren't as deeply involved in cycling as you or I are. They look at things differently and ask questions about how things could be done differently.”