According to Thomas Dekker, “grown ego” of Tim Heemskerk may explain split with Visma | Lease a Bike

Heemskerk’s departure raised plenty of questions in the cycling world. Is everything still going well at Visma? Is the team heading into a crisis? Speaking on the Live Slow Ride Fast podcast, Dekker said he sees no reason for alarm. “The team’s motto is ‘winning together’ — that motto is very important for the team, and a grown ego doesn’t fit with that.” According to the Dutchman, an inflated ego could be a possible cause of the break between Heemskerk and Visma | Lease a Bike.

“Heemskerk arrived in 2019 as basically a nobody before his successes with Vingegaard, but because of those results with the Dane, it quickly becomes ‘the coach of’,” Dekker explained. And that, he says, is exactly where things get sensitive at Visma. “Visma want to show with that motto that the team is more important than the individual, and then it can happen that a grown ego no longer fits.”

Dekker believes Heemskerk may have built his entire identity as a coach around Vingegaard, even though he coached more riders within the organisation. “I think the team put a stop to that,” he said. Laurens ten Dam added: “I also think Vingegaard himself may have leaned too heavily toward Heemskerk, which meant other coaches had less influence — and that doesn’t fit the team’s ‘winning together’ motto either.”

Dekker also argues that Visma’s much-criticised system is a major reason for the team’s success. “It’s a unique system that Visma use. Without Visma’s system, Vingegaard obviously would never have won the Tour twice. People also shouldn’t forget they still won two Grand Tours last year.”

That’s why, in Dekker’s view, the criticism isn’t entirely fair. “You then hear criticism that riders are forced to go to altitude camp, but that’s the case at every team right now. And according to my sources, it’s really not true that everything is fixed at the team,” he said, pointing to Wout van Aert as an example. “There is still room for tailor-made approaches — Van Aert, for instance, has been able to insist on living in Belgium. It’s not like you have no choices within the team.”

Finally, Dekker responded to Van Baarle’s critical story. “I can’t imagine that if Dylan asks a few months in advance whether he can do a long training ride between Dwars door Vlaanderen and the Tour of Flanders, he wouldn’t be allowed,” Dekker concluded. He did not want to comment on Uijtdebroeks’ criticism.