June recap – Successful preparations for the next big goals

After a month with the first big stage races for our Men’s and Women’s program, things calmed down a little bit in June, but with the next big races around the corner, the preparations for the riders are still ongoing!

The women’s program started its month with a doubleheader in Belgium and they opened with a bang! At Dwars door de Westhoek Pfeiffer Georgi, Léa Curinier and Charlotte Kool launched an impressive team attack inside the final 50 kilometres, with no one being able to respond. The Team DSM trio went into team time trial mode and extended their lead steadily. The chasers were not able to make the catch, and all three crossed the line together to take an extremely impressive Team DSM podium.

“There was a lot of wind today and the race took place on a short and narrow lap. We knew that we had to be there with the whole team from the beginning. We knew it was going to be a hard and long day and made a point around halfway into the race where we would fully go for it and try to break the race up. We did just that and were there with five riders in the front group. We said that we would keep on attacking as a team, so we sprinted to the corner ahead of the wind section and already built up a small gap. The girls then just went full for it from over 50 kilometres to go, which was pretty incredible. They had to fight for every second out there. It was around 30 seconds for a long time, and we had Esmée in that second group to try and disrupt the chase – she did a really good job. Eventually with around two laps to go the gap got bigger and as we hit the last lap it was over one minute, so we said that we could enjoy the finale. Pfeiffer then pulled for basically the whole last lap, she was super strong today, as were all the girls, and she crossed the line in first with Léa and Charlotte behind. We should enjoy this moment, it’s a really nice moment for the whole team,” Team DSM coach Kelvin Dekker reflected after the race.

A few days later Pfeiffer was in the mix again at Dwars door het Hageland. On a hard day of racing with some punchy hills, nasty gravel sections and challenging cobbled roads, Franziska Koch and Pfeiffer made it into the leading group and tried to split things up further by attacking continuously. Pfeiffer made the jump into the group of four that fought for the win and came in, in a strong third after some great work from the whole team.

Meanwhile, the Men’s program were back to action in Belgium taking on the Brussels Cycling Classics. On a typical Belgian parcours with twisty roads and punchy hills, the win was fought out in a reduced bunch sprint, where Team DSM neo-pro Tobias Lund Andresen sprinted to his fourth second place of the season, coming close once again to his first victory as a professional.

Stage racing continued this month as well with the famous Criterium du Dauphiné in France, where a young group of Team DSM riders took to the start line. With good teamwork as the foundation, Marco Brenner and Max Poole scored some good results for the team with two top 10 and two top five results. Max went on to pul off a nice performance in the general classification, which saw him also lead the youth classification for two days, while he finished close to the top 10 in the final GC.

Team DSM also lined up on home soil at the ZLM Tour. With a strong core from the sprint group, the team showed its strength in the opening prologue. On the 6.6 kilometres around Heinkenszand, Nils Eekhoff was the fastest and took his first victory as a professional, after turning pro with the team in 2020. Before he joined the WorldTour program, he raced for the Development program since 2017, where he also won races such as the U23 edition of Paris-Roubaix. This victory was another great milestone in his journey with the team and one we are proud of.

Meanwhile, Team DSM also lined up on home soil at the ZLM Tour. With a strong core of the sprint group, the team showed its strength in the opening prologue. On the 6,6 kilometres around Heinkenszand, Nils Eekhoff was the fastest and took his first victory as a professional, after turning pro with the team in 2020. Before he joined the WorldTour program, he raced for the Development program since 2017, where he also won races such as the U23 edition of Paris-Roubaix. This victory was another great milestone in his journey with the team.

With Alex Edmondson in second, Sam Welsford in fifth and Patrick Eddy from the Development program in ninth, three more riders finished the prologue in the top 10 – a great display of some great work from riders, race staff and the experts back in HQ.

Sam Welsford came close to taking home a second victory for the team on the final stage, but he just came short in the sprint, finishing second. Overall, the team can be proud of finishing second, third and fourth in GC and winning the team classification on home soil.

The GC group of the team took on their final race ahead of the Tour de France with the Tour de Suisse to finish their preparations coming straight from altitude. The race got overshadowed by the tragic loss of Gino Mäder, which made racing less important for that week. Romain Bardet finished this challenging week for the whole cycling family with a Top 5 in the general classification.

The Development Team lined up for a big stage race as well – the Giro Next Gen. While the focus was on gaining experience and working on the basics, the team could show themselves during some stages. Enzo Leijnse came very close to success on stage 3, where he spent the day in the breakaway and went solo in the final. But he got caught on the final kilometre after he left it all out on the road.

Our Women’s program also lined up for the Tour de Suisse. After some challenging first days, the team bounced back on the final day as Eglantine Rayer made the jump into the breakaway and showed an amazing ride, following some of the GC favourites when they bridged across. She finished fifth on the day, her first ever top five as a professional. That means she also finished her first stage race ever as a WorldTour rider in the top 10 of the general classification.

“I am really happy with this result in my first stage race, it’s my first top five in the WorldTour, first top ten on GC; and I’m super proud of my team, because we still bring back a top ten in the GC in the end. The day was long because I did not expect to do the whole race at the front but with the motivation on the radio from Kelvin, all the belief in me from the team, and thinking of my teammates it helped me to push harder,” – a proud Eglantine said after the finish.

The month was rounded off with the national championships where the Team DSM colours were visible all across Europe. We’ve seen a lot of great performances by our riders, with the winning titles of Enzo and Pavel Bittner in the U23 time trials of the Netherlands and Czech Republic and Pfeiffer Georgi’s victory at the British road race as the cherry on top of the cake.

After a quieter period, a big month of racing awaits all three of our programs, with the Tour de France for our Men’s and Women’s programs and the Giro d’Italia Donne as some of the highlights. We hope to see some of you cheering at the side of the road.