The future of cycling – How Team dsm-firmenich recruit talents for their three professional cycling programs

Jumping from the wheels and crossing the line first with their arms raised aloft; winning a professional bike race is something magical and only assigned to the world’s best. Once upon a time, these winners started as talents, as talents at their local cycling club, before being recruited by a professional team. Since its founding in 2008, Team dsm-firmenich has made significant investments in talent recruitment and development, but how did we become successful in talent recruitment? By popular demand, we looked for more inside information about how this all works with the experts behind the scenes.

The team have always had the goal of finding out the best talent and elevating them to the top of the global rankings. Nils Eekhoff, Oscar Onley, and Max Poole are riders who joined the team’s Development program, but Team dsm-firmenich does not just look for talented juniors. Marcel Kittel, Tom Dumoulin, John Degenkolb, and Jai Hindley are riders who were already racing in the pro ranks before joining the team, where they upped their game and made themselves known to the world while wearing the team’s jersey. In 2023 Matt Dinham is one of the team’s latest talents, joining from Continental side Team Bridgelane and showing himself in the Tour de France and delivering a massive performance in Glasgow by finishing 7^th the World Championship.

It can be helpful to briefly explain what is meant by talent recruitment before delving deeper into talent scouting. Hans Timmermans, Scouting Coordinator of Team dsm-firmenich, says, “The process is actually quite comprehensive. There are five main aspects, including riders’ physical and mental maturity, technical and tactical racing skills, and finally the degree to which their personality matches with the top-level sport mentality of Team dsm-firmenich. In the end, it’s a puzzle we try to solve with as much precision as we can.

Returning to the recruitment strategy, does the team have a certain rider profile in mind? “Since we are looking for the future winners in cycling and try to estimate their potential for the future, their current results are actually less important.” Considering this open-minded viewpoint, the recruitment process begins with research. A lot of research. The team deploys an extensive process to find and evaluate possible interesting riders, where Team dsm-firmenich’s innovative nature comes in handy.

At that moment, Team dsm-firmenich’s Data Expert Sjors Groot is of great importance. “I work closely with Hans and Iwan (Spekenbrink, CEO Team dsm-firmenich, red.) as they come to me with access to Training Peaks accounts from riders we’re interested in, and they ask me to have a look at the data. I then make an analysis of their performances and send those reports to Hans and Iwan to provide their considerations with data-driven insights. Sometimes, riders also directly connect to me via their agents or their teams, but those are mostly juniors.” When seeing a rider with immense potential, the team then travels to training sessions with the rider or invites them to the Team dsm-firmenich Aqua-Step Keep Challenging Center for additional conversations.

Sjors begins by considering the data for younger talents before taking the rider’s performance into account. “We sometimes don’t know precisely what kind of rider they are yet, or we don’t want to put them too quickly into a certain area, so I don’t want to be biased.” The juniors’ race parcourses are typically shorter, therefore Sjors would analyse the juniors’ maximal efforts based on their training performances rather than race data. In contrast, older riders are already focusing more on a certain specialization. “Considering this, I would never claim that GC racers are not skilled cyclists due to their sprinting efforts. When analysing, I’m more interested in how they perform at the end of a race than in their maximum training efforts. However, their training volume over the past seasons is another crucial factor.”

Following the completion of all analysis, Sjors attempts to make a precise forecast of the rider’s future progress. “When projecting someone’s future, several different factors are taken into consideration. However, we can gain a sense of the rider’s current situation and use it to infer some predictions for the future. According to Hans, one of these factors is maturity. “Juniors are still young and it’s normal that there is a difference in their way of living,” he says. “While some juniors still live like youngsters, others are starting to appreciate the professional cycling lifestyle.” Therefore, recruiting younger talents with the right mentality might be more challenging than experienced riders. “But it’s still crucial to understand the rider’s personality, even for older riders.”

And finally, how can riders reach Team dsm-firmenich? “We have solid relationships with numerous sports directors from various categories all over the world. Additionally, there are rider agents, who are actively approaching us for talents to secure a spot on our team. If there is no opportunity to connect via these ways, we use our social media recruitment account, as most riders these days are active on these platforms.

To contact Team dsm-firmenich for any recruitment inquiries, please contact recruitment@keep-challenging.com.