500 words about March

We’ve had a month of classics, stage racing and our first Monument of the year – recap on what happened in March in 500 words.

After Opening Weekend and the first classics of the 2024 season, Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico were on the schedule for the Men’s peloton as the first big tests on European soil.

You might have the legs, but you also need a bit of luck. Unfortunately, this wasn’t always on our side in March. Team dsm-firmenich PostNL head coach Rudi Kemna explained:

“We had a good start to both races with a fourth place for Nils in France, followed by a good TT from both Max and Romain, and a solid sprint by Casper in Italy. But after this we were struck by quite some bad luck. First, we lost most of our roster to sickness in France, and both Max and Romain crashed hard in Italy, forcing them to abandon with quite some injuries. It was a disappointing campaign here, but we hope to bounce back from this.”

It wasn’t all bad luck though; Kevin Vermaerke added another nice result to his palmares with a fifth place at Milano-Torino, Fabio Jakobsen came to form sprinting to second place at Nokere Koerse, and Emils Liepins fought for the victory at Bredene Koksijde Classic – to name a few highlights.

Meanwhile, preparations for the upcoming goals are quite literally up in the mist in Tenerife, where Warren Barguil and Oscar Onley are at altitude camp.

“Both Warren and Oscar had a successful start to the season after some good training in the winter. Now Oscar is back from his injury, he and Warren are heading towards top shape for their next goals with some quite specific training at altitude, and after a good adaptation period, both have been maximising on the optimal effects of altitude.” Team dsm-firmenich Head of Science Narelle Neumann summarised the camp.

Our Women’s and Development programs also showed some nice racing, and atmosphere across the team came to a high as all hard work came together perfectly at the same moment. Josie Nelson stormed to her first win on the final day of Tour de Normandie, and only 10 minutes later, Johan Dorussen finished off an exceptional lead-out by his teammates winning Dropenomloop Rucphen for the Development program. Our Women’s program also showed some remarkable performances at the classics. At Classic-Brugge-De Panne and Gent-Wevelgem, they led Dutch sprinter Charlotte Kool to second and fourth place – nice results to build on in the coming weeks.

“It was nice to see our hard work in the Women’s and Development programs pay off this month. Johan was really motivated after racing with the pros for the first time at Nokere Koerse the week before – and it’s clear that he took this into his racing the next week. It’s something special that our youngsters can really gain something from the possibility of mixed races. And with Josie we have a new face in the team – it’s great that can come in with a performance display like this and sets a great foundation for what’s to come. We hope to show more of those performances in the coming months across all the programs,” Rudi Kemna summarized.

Onto April now…Roubaix and the Ardennes are calling!