Plugge’s three-year plan with Ferrand-Prévot succeeds in just eight months, but "there are still plenty of challenges ahead"

'The Plan' worked again for the Dutch team. 'This is part of the plan. We always make a plan, and without one, you get nowhere. Rutger, Jos, and Jan (team managers Tijssen, Boven, and Van Emden, ed.) executed it flawlessly, with a fantastic Pauline and the whole team. We saw once again that without a team, you're nowhere," said Plugge, referring to the nail-biting moment in the opening phase of the final stage.

“Breaking away in the first descent and closing the gap with the whole team, I can tell you now that that wasn't the plan,” Van Emden laughed at Sporza. “Then it gets a bit exciting. Now we all had to ride really hard. That shows that they were also strong across the board.”

"With a weak team, it could have easily gone wrong," said the former rider, who had confidence in his protégé. "She has already raced on the road. It's not like she's never ridden in the peloton. We were a little worried before the first race, but those worries disappeared immediately. She continued on that momentum."

Plugge entered into a three-year plan with Ferrand-Prévot, but after just eight months, he can already see success with the Tour victory. “We've been working towards this since winter, and you can see the result.”

“We knew she had the ability, but we didn't know she could do it on her first attempt,” he admits. “We know what she's capable of, but you have to defeat the competition. And we didn't know if she was capable of that after eight or nine days. Now she has proven that she is. The plan was to finish on the podium, but standing on the highest step is amazing.”

The fact that Ferrand-Prévot beat previous Tour winners Demi Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma makes it even better. “We looked at what it would take to beat those two. We knew it was possible, but you also need a strong mind to ride uphill that hard for an hour. It just worked out well.”

Is Visma | Lease a Bike now at its peak? I realise that something special has happened. You put a lot of passion into it, and then it still gets exciting, but it's wonderful,“ says Van Emden. ”There are still plenty of challenges,“ says Plugge. ”We're going to keep building. We're going to keep investing in women's cycling. This is part of that.”