After a brilliant August for Team dsm-firmenich PostNL across the board, the team looked to continue that momentum in September. We reflect on action across three continents in this month’s 500-word recap as the summer sun slowly fades on the season’s racing.
Still riding on the high from the opening two weeks at the Vuelta a España, our Men’s program continued their all-in racing style in the closing week. More memorable performances followed in the breakaways with further break-out displays from Max Poole who claimed two more podium places, while Pavel Bittner sprinted to second on Stage 17 – all after some exceptional teamwork. It meant we left Spain with one win to our name, alongside five stage podiums and a further five top tens; a good haul after 21 days of hard racing.
Away from Spain, we also competed at the Tour of Britain where Oscar Onley impressed on home roads. In fact, four of our six-man squad for that race came from the United Kingdom. Come the end of the week, a third-place on stage two with Oscar resulted in a great second place overall for the team.
In the meantime, we also travelled across the Atlantic Ocean to take on the Canadian double header of GP Québec and GP Montréal. Although we didn’t get the results we hoped for there, an impressive ride from Frank van den Broek in the birthplace of poutine saw him “poutine on” the hurt for the peloton, while Romain Bardet attacked multiple times in Montréal after being well set up by the team.
Our Women’s program took on two stage races, starting the month on the climbs at the Tour de Romandie where we battled to sixth place overall with Juliette Labous, then more recently at Tour de la Semois where a younger group attacked throughout the two days: ultimately finishing seventh on GC with Elise Uijen.
