Rudi Kemna and dsm-firmenich PostNL preach realism: 'Can be very tough, but we know how it works'

The 2023 cycling year of dsm-firmenichPostNL could be summarized in one word. The will to perform is dripping off the Dutch team, but at the same time, in an accelerating rat race, it is occasionally forced to face the facts. Sports director Rudi Kemna told IDLProcycling towards the start of the cycling year how the Dutch team wants to position itself in the coming season.

The former Skil/Shimano/Argos/Giant/Sunweb team has the knowledge and ability to change strategy and has developed from an ugly duckling into the sprint team of choice with MarcelKittel on board, after which it successfully made the transition to the bigger-cap plans of Tom Dumoulin and co. In between, it also rocketed with classics men c.q. free riders like John Degenkolb, Warren Barguil and MichaelMatthews on multiple fronts. Coincidence that those first two have returned? Probably not.

However, the fact is also that the world around them may have gone nóg faster. Sky and later UAE-Team Emirates and Visma | Lease a Bike have pushed the boundaries on a sporting and budgetary level, and just add top talents like Remco Evenepoel and Mathieu van der Poel. So the fact that PostNL has joined Iwan Spekenbrink's formation for it 2024 is certainly not a superfluous luxury in order to eventually be able to stand up to all that violence.

'What we do every year is look at what level cycling in general is at,' explained the energetic-looking Kemna during the training camp in Calpe. 'In Development, the biggest goal is to train them, there the basics are very important. With the ladies and men we also want to show ourselves, at WorldTour level,' he sets his goal. 'With the ladies we have already succeeded very well the last few years, but with the men we are not always satisfied. The level is terribly high, so we have to look carefully where we can show ourselves with the qualities and possibilities we have. It's not that we don't have good talent, but the competition is so fierce.

dsm-firmenich PostNL embarks on 2024 with two great leaders:Romain Bardet and Fabio Jakobsen, who are both going to face cutthroat competition in the Giro d'Italia as well as Tour de France. ''We think we have a very good leader with Romain, where the very highest top will also be difficult for him. In addition we have good talents who are going along in the development of the classification, while in the sprint we have also been working for several years to get back to the highest level. Sometimes this goes well, sometimes it goes less well.

For someone like Jakobsen, "occasionally good, occasionally less" is not enough, so he told himself. With the Dutch spurt bomb, someone has been brought in who fits the team's core values perfectly:performing, but also developing, giving feedback back and being engaged in the process. Because that is what setting up a good sprint train is all about, the team knows all too well from the Kittel period.

'We have been talking to Fabio for a long time about what we see in sprinting that he sees,' Kemna explained the realization of the top transfer. 'We have quite a lot of experience in that, but Fabio himself also has a very strong view in that. That drive is a strong side of him, so that goes very well together. Complement that with good riders and staff and you see that the connection is there. A good sprinter like Fabio can bring the rest of the team to a higher level.

'Last year with Sam Welsford we had quite a good sprinter, but not the experience. The same went for our Italian guy,Alberto Dainese. That caused some despair in the group, also because of a sprinter with less experience. Not only Jakobsen, but also Dutch riders such as TimoRoosen, Julius van den Berg, Bram Welten and Nils Eekhoff and Casper van Uden, who have been racing for the team for some time.

'We are a Dutch-licensed team withDutch partners, so we are definitely looking at that pond,' said the man fromandsm-firmenich PostNL. 'That also includes - in the case of PostNL - Belgium andLuxembourg, so that's where those riders can come from. But we have mainly looked at what fits into the selection and what possibilities we have. Preferably you choose a Belgian or Dutchman, but that could just as well be an Australian, German or Dane. We mainly look at the sporting choices.

Kemna speaks the truth, as the team is also including Tobias Lund Andresen, Emils Liepins, Alex Edmondson, among others, in that trajectory.'We have three programs, on which we can put a whole pool of sprinters. In doing so, we look at everyone's qualities and role. So it's not so that the composition is always the same, but that role is. Compare it to soccer, where you can substitute one left winger for another left winger.'

Aha, soccer, always an interesting comparison. Is there then also an A-team? If PSV has to play soccer against Go Ahead Eagles (a random prep race), they draft different players as they did against Ajax (the Tour de France). Kemna smiles at our interjection and counters. 'There is a difference in that. It depends if you have to carry the match or not. In the Tour there are also other interests, so we will certainly look at how that all sits. For us, though, it's very important that we have the right vibe and mentality in the group, so you can always put that sprinter in place,' he is still keeping the exact division of roles in the middle.

In addition to sprint talent, the team is overflowing with young climbing talent: Max Poole, Matthew Dinham. Oscar Onley, Gijs Leemreize, Frank vanden Broek and so on. For them, it's nice that Bardet is taking a lot of attention off and on for now. 'Romain has been working for several years to take that group with him in that. He doesn't shout through the peloton all day, but when he says something all the ears are on alert. Talents like Max and now Frank can grow a lot through that. It is true that we have consciously gone into the sprinting side, because we think there is a lot to gain there. It becomes more difficult if you have to compete against Pogacar or Vingegaard. There is a gap there now, but we have talents that we expect can go very far, "Kemna explains the plans of his mountain goats.

Remaining, the classics. We went through the formation's press release really well, but didn't really come across what the spring goals are. Rudi, come on in. 'John Degenkolb is still quite good, but there's a smattering of riders up there who are riding much harder. We are not under the illusion that we can just compete for theseges, but we do have other ambitions: it's about teamwork and creating chances," Kemna puts it.

'I can act very tough, but we don't think we can go up there,' they realize at the team. Like John did in Roubaix last year; that was mostly tactically very good. We do know how classics work. If you have three hills in a row and you are already pulling hard on two of them, we can't go with you the third time. That's the reality, when those real men are going to moped up. But the reality is that there are also other opportunities," Kemna said.