The secret of Jumbo Visma's never-before-seen success: "It's not just money"

Someone wrote that cycling is the only team sport in which glory is always individual.. But its legend is also its colors. The suede and blue jersey of Merckx's Molteni, the yellow of Kas of the tiny Spanish climbers, the revolutionary design of La Vie Claire inspired by the artist Piet Mondrian, the blue and white of Indurain's Banesto…. Not long ago, in black, Sky dominated like no one else. The best team in history was named. Now it is the Jumbo Visma wasps that tyrannize the peloton, those that dispute that honor, the cyclists who conquer unprecedented peaks, the three great ones in the same year, the complete podium of the Vuelta that ended on Sunday in Madrid.

The Roglic Tour, the Vingegaard Tour and the Sepp Kuss Tour. In five years, the Dutch squad, the heirs of the controversial Rabobank, has taken power. And that was restarted from the deepest hole when in 2013 the bank left the sponsorship of a team tainted by doping and Merijn Zeeman and Richard Plugge renamed it Belkin (White) to break with the past, “from the second budget to the most “low of the pack”. A gradual growth based on a philosophy focused on talent detection, runner development and technology. “It is a team that has been very serious about everything for years and is now getting the results,” reasons Pascual Momparler.. A reinvention until this historic photo of Guadarrama in a Vuelta that they have conquered like no one remembered, playing at will with the final winner and taking the three boxes, something that had only happened in the 1913 Tour with the Peugeot and in the Vuelta 1966, when Kas occupied six of the top seven places.

Kuss, escorted by Vingegaard and Roglic, on Saturday in Guadarrama. OSCAR DEL POZO AFP

Since 2019, seven Grand Tours, including the last two Tours, and six more podiums. Partial victories in all scenarios, 60 so far this year (UAE, second, total 50), with Wout Van Aert as king of the classics. In 2021 there were 45 and 48 last year. satiety. To such an extent that the supermarket chain that gives it its main name has said enough, “we have already won everything there is to win”, and Jumbo will disappear from its jerseys by 2024 at the latest.. Although, as the Spanish coach explains, his is not just a matter of money. «Perhaps they have the largest budget [about 40 million euros which includes the women's structure and the subsidiary, not much more than the UAE or Ineos] but that is not enough to sweep. watch football. PSG had Neymar, Mbappé and Messi and did not win the Champions League. The only one they signed breaking the market was Van Aert, the others are signings that they have made progress. Now it is the fashionable team, the one that everyone wants to go to because they are ahead of the curve.”. «By budget there are other similar teams and money, furthermore, is not everything. They have beaten the UAE in all scenarios, in the Giro, in the Tour and in the Vuelta. There are other factors such as camaraderie, how great leaders are able to sacrifice.. And work in time. It has been a slow process, but it has given them results.. To the point of the historical record of winning the big three in one year. They have also worked very well with the youth team, gradually bringing out top-level cyclists from their development team,” analyzes Eduardo Chozas.

Best cycling teams. Jumbo

But the Jumbo will be remembered. And, like all those who reigned brutally, those who subjugated their equals, he is also surrounded by controversy. For not leaving even the crumbs behind. For making “the show boring for the viewer,” as Chozas admits: “It is too strong a domain. You know he's going to win a Jumbo. Because in cycling the spectacle is created with equality. Although be careful, it is their credit and it is also nice how the work of a great team achieves historic results. The others will have to step up.”

He shares analysis of another myth of the Spanish platoon, a contemporary of Chozas and also a member of one of the most modern and tactical squads ever, the ONCE. For Anselmo Fuerte “they are boring.” «It is not good for cycling. They make the races monotonous. With these short routes, you know that they are going to dominate the stages,” the Madrid native reasons the general feeling.. “I don't know if it's good for cycling that they're destroying. But it has been good that they were fighting for the Vuelta among themselves. “If a week ago they decided that Kuss won it, it would have been the most boring in history,” adds Momparler.

Best cycling teams. Sky

To Jumbo, who has been filling 2023 with everlasting snapshots – from that first stage of the Paris Nice conquered by Laporte in which he entered escorted by Van Aert and Roglic, to the first three places in the Tourmalet and the Angliru in this Vuelta – , the haze of suspicion also surrounds him. «They always get up and with a dominance like that, more. But it is something intrinsic to cycling. Not much has been said about Pogba's positive result,” Fuerte complains.. Neither the Sky – nor of course Armstrong's US Postal – escaped it.. “Everyone wants to know our secret,” said Zeeeman, the sports director since 2013. “But I don't think we have one: it was INSCYD (a performance analysis software) for a while, then ketones, now baking soda. sodium…”, he protested earlier this year in an interview for Eurosport.

“I don't know how long his dominance will last,” thinks Momparler. Because that is the doubt, until when, how it is broken. «They even have the best gregarious people. You have to be very brave and not be afraid of losing your place in the general classification. They create a lot of doubts in their rivals and they take advantage of it,” Chozas surrenders. «Regulating signings, with salaries and budgets. “To try to get the leaders to divide themselves into several teams and not concentrate on two or three as is happening now with Jumbo, UAE, INEOS…”, Fuerte ditches.