January recap – Great kick-off with outstanding 24 hours

After more than two months without road racing, the wait was finally over and our first riders returned to racing after some hard work during the winter, with hours of training and the first Team Camps.

After two years of absence, the traditional season kick-off in Australia was back on the racing schedule. Before the big peloton conquered the Australian roads, cycling returned with the Australian Championships. In the road race, our two starters Chris Hamilton and Matt Dinham put on a strong fight against some other teams who had bigger numbers. Matt showed a great debut in the Team DSM colours and worked hard to support Chris, who finished fifth in the end. Both came together with the team afterwards and took on the traditional criterium ahead of the Tour Down Under. Unfortunately, Patrick Bevin crashed during the fast race but the team kept on fighting and Marius finished in a strong fifth position in the criterium.

He took the confidence with him to the Tour Down Under, where he confirmed his shape and took home two good top tens and two solid 11^th places. On the last day, the team went all in again, to aim for another top result:

“We had the aim to race pretty aggressively, it was a short and hard stage. The plan was to get Matt or me in the break and we did that. Unfortunately, we weren’t given too much leeway up the road. In the end, it all came together for the last lap. We tried to see how I would go in the final and try something for Marius, but unfortunately, he was caught up in a crash so that stopped him” said Chris Hamilton looking back on the day.

The Australian block was not over yet though. After a week of training and Australia Day celebrations, the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race was on the menu. The team showed a great race, covering all the attacks and setting up Marius perfectly for the final kick to the line.

“They covered the moves so I could stick in the bunch and save energy for the final. There is a little downhill before the finish where I could build up speed and I then launched the sprint early and went full-gas to the line”, said race winner Marius looking back on the amazing team effort, celebrating his first professional victory.

Team DSM Coach Luke Roberts added: “After the racing wrapped up in Adelaide last week, we took quite some confidence out of it. We knew with the qualities we had then we would have a good chance to go for the victory here. We kept our focus on the race and prepared well for this during the week. We came in with a good plan to try and set Marius up for the win. The boys didn’t put a foot wrong today, they rode really well as a group, and it was a strong team effort from everyone. It was great to see Marius get up and take the victory, it’s very well deserved for all of the boys.”

Meanwhile, another part of the Men’s program kicked off their season in San Juan. The race started with some bad luck, seeing Sam Welsford crashing hard on day two. The team showed some fighting spirit for each other though, and his teammates used their chances very well. Tobias Lund Andresen sprinted to a nice seventh place on stage two and wore the best young riders jersey for three days and Niklas Märkl sprinted to a nice top five result on day four. On the only GC day, Kevin Vermaerke showed some good climbing legs and finished ninth on the Alto Colorado. On the final two days, the great teamwork finally paid off. The guys rode in a really organised way and did some remarkable lead-outs for Sam, who showed his great power and took the back-to-back wins to make it a great week instead of a good week.

“The boys were so good in the last lap again and looked after me so well. We hit the last kilometre and we had five guys left; it is really incredible how well drilled we are coming into the end of this week. This is super special for me and the team. Doing it once is already nice, but doing it again, with the guys winning in Australia too, is even nicer and just shows what we are capable of as a team. This is a great start to our season”, Sam said after his second win of the race.

After the outstanding 24 hours with three victories on two continents, racing comes closer to our European base now, with races in the Middle East at the beginning of February and the first races in Europe later that month.