Zero Dutch names in Visma-Lease a Bike 2025 Tour de France pre-selection sparks controversy in Netherlands

Visma-Lease a Bike‘s likely decision not to have any Dutch riders help fight for a third Tour de France win with Jonas Vingegaard this July has come under fierce criticism from some former top riders in the team’s home country of the Netherlands. 

According to multiple sources, the most likely seven Visma-Lease a Bike riders set to head for the Tour’s start line in Lille next July 5 alongside Dane Jonas Vingegaard are Britain’s Simon Yates, North Americans Sepp Kuss and Matteo Jorgenson, France’s Christophe Laporte and three Belgians: Victor Campenaerts, Wout van Aert and Tiesj Benoot. 

The potential for a complete absence of Netherlands-born riders in their 2025 Tour lineup has been criticised strongly by Michael Boogerd and Tom Dumoulin, two of the Netherlands’ top former riders.

“At Rabobank, the whole of the Netherlands supported the team,” Boogerd, a winner of two Tour stages and whose fifth place overall in the 1998 race long acted as the goal to beat for fellow Dutch riders, told Belgian newspaper Nieuwsblad.

“I wonder what it will be like now. The general public wants to see their fellow countrymen. It will soon be very difficult for the Dutch to support Visma,” Boogerd, himself a former Rabobank rider, concluded.

Should the final Tour de France roster be confirmed as it stands in January it would be the first time ever in a squad with Dutch roots stretching back to Jumbo, Rabobank and before that Wordperfect Kwantum in the 1980s that no Netherlands riders are included.

The 2025 provisional lineup does not include either former Giro d’Italia podium finisher Wilco Kelderman or Bart Lemmen, both Dutch riders who were present in the 2024 race – although Lemmen was a last-minute replacement for Sepp Kuss after the American fell sick just before the start. There is also no place for Steven Kruijswijk, third overall in the 2019 Tour de France or the hugely talented Dutch allrounder Dylan van Baarle. As for Olav Kooij, Visma’s top local sprinter will be heading to the Giro d’Italia.

It remains far from certain that the final line-up is the same one as planned now, given the number of variables pro cycling can experience in the space of weeks, let alone months. But the idea of a team with no Dutch riders, even on paper, is already causing heads to shake in the Netherlands.

“That says a lot about the state of our racing,” Boogerd told Nieuwsblad. “It’s not normal, it’s actually extremely unfortunate.

“It’s just business. How can we still call this team the flagbearer of Dutch cycling?” he asked rhetorically.

Boogerd said that the country’s cycling fans could still root for Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck). However, the Dutch star has recently hinted he might skip the Tour de France altogether.

Visma’s previous lowest number of Dutch riders in the Tour dates from 2022, when Kruijswijk was their only Netherlands rider present.  

Former Jumbo racer and 2017 Giro d’Italia winner Tom Dumoulin expressed his own disappointment at the theoretical lineup, telling Dutch news agency NOS, “If you want to encourage young Dutch people to get on the bike, this isn’t the way to do it.

“In the past, you had a major Dutch sponsor with Rabobank or Jumbo. There was probably more support within the team to choose Dutch riders.

“I used to support the Dutch riders in the Tour. That really means something. If they really want to convey that they are a Dutch team, you select a Dutchman.”

Fellow cycling analyst and ex-professional Stef Clement, who rode eighteen Grand Tours many of them when the team was backed by former sponsors LottoNL and Rabobank, was equally unsettled by the team’s 2025 choice. 

“The term ‘Dutch’ team no longer has any value. If Jayco-AIUIa goes to the Tour with Dylan Groenewegen, Elmar Reinders and Koen Bouwman, that is more of a Dutch Tour team than Visma,” he told NOS.

However, team boss Richard Plugge had no time for such patriotic sentiments, despite being Dutch himself. “I just want to win the Tour,” he told Wielerflits. “If we have more chance of doing so with foreign riders, then so be it.

“With the eight riders we have chosen, we are best able to win the Tour.”