{"id":575418,"date":"2025-11-17T03:52:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T03:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/575418\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T03:52:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T03:52:16","slug":"probably-my-final-year-monument-winner-grand-tour-stage-winner-and-key-team-sky-domestique-readying-for-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/575418\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Probably my final year&#8221; \u2013 Monument winner, Grand Tour stage winner and key Team Sky domestique readying for retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is nice to think about ending my career with a team that has a Dutch character. They have a lot of ambition, and I just want to enjoy riding my bike for a year, get results in races and finish with a good feeling. It is probably my final year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>A new setting, a realistic ambition and a final long-shot target<a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/cycling\/unibet-tietema-rockets-sign-wout-poels-as-they-make-push-on-tour-de-france-wildcard\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener\">Poels will race in 2026 with Unibet Rose Rockets<\/a>, which will be his first team outside the WorldTour since 2010. Unlike Astana, the project relies on wildcard invitations for the biggest events, but Poels has not ruled out the possibility of ending his career on the sport\u2019s biggest stage if circumstances align.\u201cTo be honest, I was not hoping to take part in the <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/tour-de-france\" title=\"Tour de France\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tour de France<\/a> again, but if I could, it would be a big bonus,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond sporting goals, Poels has also chosen to relocate from Germany back to the Netherlands after many years abroad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to live close to my family again. As an athlete, you have quite a special life. I have always done everything I could for cycling and never really built a social life. As a rider, you are quite selfish. You need to be in order to reach the top, but now things are changing,\u201d he explained, adding that fatherhood in 2022 reshaped elements of his outlook.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"280\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/woutpoels-chrisfroome-68dba6e50f9ec.jpg@webp.webp\" class=\"w-auto h-auto\" alt=\"WoutPoels_ChrisFroome\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Poels was a key lieutenant of Chris Froome during his Team Sky days<\/p>\n<p>A career that spans eras and leaves a balanced legacy<\/p>\n<p>Although best known for his mountain support role at Team Sky during their Grand Tour-dominating period, Poels also produced victories of the highest calibre \u2014 most notably Liege-Bastogne-Liege in 2016 and stage wins in both the Tour de France and Vuelta a Espana, alongside successes in several major stage races.<\/p>\n<p>His next year may therefore act not only as a farewell, but as an opportunity to choose the tone, environment and meaning of that farewell \u2014 something very few long-serving professionals ever secure.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; \u201cIt is nice to think about ending my career with a team that has a Dutch character.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,20680,16,182456,15,182455],"class_list":{"0":"post-575418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-tour-de-france","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-unibet-tietema-rockets","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-wout-poels"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115563013825045402","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}