Bicycle Racing News and Opinion,
Friday, November 1, 2024
Back to news and opinion index page for links to archived stories | Commentary | Our YouTube page
2024 Tour de France | 2024 Giro d'Italia
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. - Henry Ford
Bill and Carol McGann's book The Story of the Giro d'Italia, A Year-by-Year History of the Tour of Italy, Vol 2: 1971 - 2011 is available in print, Kindle eBook and audiobook versions. To get your copy, just click on the Amazon link on the right.
Current racing:
- November 1: X20 Trofee Oudenaarde-Koppenbergcross
Upcoming racing:
- November 3: European Cyclocross Championships
- November 17: Flandriencross
Latest completed racing:
- October 27: Superprestige Overijse-Vlaamse Druivencross
- October 15 - 20: Tour of Guangxi
- October 20: Japan Cup Road Race
- October 20: Veneto Classic
- October 16: Giro del Veneto
- October 13: Chrono des Nations
- October 12: Il Lombardia
- October 10: Gran Piemonte
- October 8: Tre Valli Varesine
Here's the team's post:
The 2024 cycling year is behind us. Relive the past season of our teams in numbers!
Last season, 58 riders defended the colours of Team Visma | Lease a Bike, divided into three teams. Our riders collectively rode 363,693 competitive kilometres. That is nine times the circumference of the earth!
Team Visma | Lease a Bike ended the season with 61 wins. In a season filled with ups and downs, we witnessed some memorable moments. The Dutch team made history by becoming the first team ever to win Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico in the same year and Marianne Vos rode to her 250th professional victory in Dwars door Vlaanderen.
Team Visma | Lease a Bike
Team Visma | Lease a Bike grabbed its first win in the Clasica de Almeria in early February thanks to Olav Kooij. It was the first of 32 victories the WorldTour team managed to record in 2024. Kooij won a total of eight races, with the ninth stage in the Giro d'Italia as highlight. It was his first stage win in a grand tour. Just like in 2023, Team Visma | Lease a Bike dominated the Flemish opening weekend. Jan Tratnik and Wout van Aert won Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne. For the second season in a row, the Dutch team managed to win both classics.
Olav Kooij wins the 2024 Clasica de Almeria
5 Grand Tour stage wins
Team Visma | Lease a Bike recorded five grand tour stage wins in 2024. In the Tour de France, we witnessed the renaissance of Jonas Vingegaard, who managed to win stage eleven after recovering from a serious injury. In the Vuelta a España, Wout van Aert was the absolute protagonist. The Belgian won three stages, wore the red leader's jersey for two days and was leader in both the points and mountain classification. Unfortunately, a fall caused an early exit.
Jonas Vingegaard recorded the most victories last season. The Dane celebrated a total of nine times. Besides an emotional stage win in the Tour, he also captured overall victories in O Gran Camiño, Tirreno-Adriatico and the Tour of Poland. Matteo Jorgenson (Paris-Nice) , Sepp Kuss (Vuelta a Burgos) and Koen Bouwman (Coppi e Bartali) also won an overall classification each.
5,500 bidons used during the Tour
Jorgenson impressed in his first season with Team Visma | Lease a Bike. The versatile American showed himself in the spring classics, culminating in his victory in Dwars door Vlaanderen. A few weeks earlier, he managed to win the overall classification of Paris-Nice. In the summer, he continued to show his excellent form in the Critérium du Dauphiné and the Tour de France. Discover all the statistics below!
Team Visma | Lease a Bike Women
Our women's team raced 56,236 race kilometres in 2024. Seventeen times a rider from Team Visma | Lease a Bike Women was the strongest last season. Marianne Vos had an impressive spring with victories in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Dwars door Vlaanderen and Amstel Gold Race. She also won the overall classification in the Volta a Catalunya and the points classifications both the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift and the Vuelta Femenina. In that Vuelta , Riejanne Markus was on the final podium.
Team Visma | Lease a Bike Development
The youngsters of our development team showed their talent once again last season. The fifteen promising riders rode a total of almost 76,000 kilometres. Colby Simmons racked up the most race kilometres: 6,991. Team Visma | Lease a Bike Development recorded twelve victories. The victory king was 19-year-old Jørgen Nordhagen with five wins. Furthermore, Matthew Brennan won the final stage of the Giro Next Gen and Darren van Bekkum won the Ronde de l'Isard.
Content continues below the ads
14 Devo riders raced with the WorldTour team in 2024
In 2025, four riders from the development team will step up to Team Visma | Lease a Bike's WorldTour squad. Besides Jørgen Nordhagen, also Matthew Brennan, Tijmen Graat and Menno Huising signed a contract with the main squad. During the season, fourteen riders from Team Visma | Lease a Bike Development already had the chance to compete in races with the WorldTour team.
Championships and Olympic Games
The Team Visma | Lease a Bike riders also managed to win at the national and international championships. Anna Henderson (Great Britain), Riejanne Markus (Netherlands) and Tomos Pattinson (Great Britain) became national time trial champions. In Hungary, Attila Valter took his third consecutive national title in the road race. In doing so, he equalled the record of three wins.
At the Olympics, three of our riders rode to a medal. Wout van Aert and Anna Henderson won bronze and silver in the Olympic time trial. In the road race, Marianne Vos sprinted to the silver medal, her third career Olympic medal. In early October, she achieved another milestone by becoming world gravel champion in Leuven. It was her fourteenth world title ever, across all cycling disciplines.
In Belgian Limburg, Edoardo Affini was crowned European time trial champion again. The Italian could celebrate again a day later, as he and his teammates captured the European title in the Mixed Relay. In the road race, Kooij sprinted to silver. Shortly afterwards, Affini finished third in the World Cup time trial.
Content continues below the ads
Here’s the team’s post:
Israel – Premier Tech concluded its 10th season earlier this month, marking its most successful season in every possible aspect.
Here are some key highlights from an unforgettable 10 months of racing.
Season overview
The team achieved 29 victories this season, matching its record from 2019, though the level of victory was significantly higher this year.
Eight wins came in UCI WorldTour races, with a further five in UCI ProSeries events.
The team’s wins were claimed by 12 different riders and six nationalities (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Great Britain, Israel, and New Zealand).
Three of these riders – Joe Blackmore, Mason Hollyman, Riley Pickrell – claimed their first professional victories in 2024. For Derek Gee and Oded Kogut, their stage wins at the Critérium du Dauphiné and Cro Race respectively marked their first career victories outside of National Championships triumphs.
Throughout the 2024 season, the team participated in 88 races, securing 29 victories and no fewer than 88 podium finishes (1st, 2nd, or 3rd place).
IPT won races in all months from January through October with the exception of May. The team still recorded five podium finishes in May.
Milestone Achievements
For the first time in the team’s history, IPT won a UCI WorldTour one-day race, with Stevie Williams claiming victory at Flèche Wallonne in Belgium in April.
Stephen Williams wins the 2024 Flèche Wallone. Sirotti photo
The team also won its first UCI WorldTour stage race, with Williams winning the Tour Down Under in Australia in January.
For the first time in the team’s history, a rider in the top 10 in the overall classification of the Tour de France. Canadian Derek Gee placed ninth overall on his debut in the race.
IPT continued its run of winning at least one Grand Tour stage each year since 2020: Mike Woods soloed to an unforgettable victory on stage 13 of the Vuelta a España at Puerto de Ancares.
In addition to the 12 riders who won races in 2024, an additional eight finished either second or third in at least one race. Marco Frigo finished second on stage 6 of the Vuelta, while Pascal Ackermann rounded out the podium in three Tour de France stages.
Content continues below the ads
Reaction #1
Stevie Williams says of 2024: “It has been a really good season, one I could have only dreamed of this time last year. Taking the biggest victories of my career is extremely special, but the way I’ve stepped up this year has been wonderful. All the hard work I put in over the winter in Andorra really paid off. It’s been a privilege to be a part of this team in 2024, IPT’s most successful to date – it’s been like racing with friends. I’m looking forward to improving even more and trying to win some nice races again in 2025.”
Israeli Riders
For the first time, an Israeli rider secured four victories in a single season: Itamar Einhorn won two stages apiece at the Tours of Rwanda and Taiwan. Einhorn went on to sign a one-year contract extension with the team for 2025.
For the first time, two Israeli riders claimed victories in a single season, with Israeli champion Oded Kogut winning the final stage of Cro Race.
Kogut also claimed both the Israeli road and time trial titles, while riders from the IPT Academy (Matar Peretz and Imry Faingezicht) won the under-23 road and ITT titles respectively.
Number crunching
Marco Frigo had the most racing days of any rider in 2024: 73, which includes completing both the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España
Even though injury sidelined him for January and February, British rider Jake Stewart completed the most racing kilometers: 11,104.
IPT competed in 28 Belgian races in 2024. France (19) and Italy (13) are the only other countries in which the team rode 10 races or more.
British riders (Stevie Williams and Joe Blackmore) have taken the team’s last five GC victories, dating back to Williams’ at the Arctic Race of Norway in August 2023.
Reaction #2
Kjell Carlström, the team’s General Manager, says: “IPT had a successful season this year. We were able to win our first-ever UCI WorldTour races, both a stage race [Tour Down Under] and a one day race [Flèche Wallonne].
“On top of that we were consistently scoring victories and nice results throughout the season all the way to the end with two stage wins in Guangxi. Although we had even bigger objectives, we did achieve most of the goals we had set out to do, including the most important one of securing all Grand Tour and WorldTour invitations for 2025. This puts us in a good place for the final year of the UCI WorldTour license cycle to secure the license. Although we still have to do a good season in 2025, we are on the right track. All through the team we have more depth and this means that we are a stronger team. This is also the case for 2025.
“From an Israeli perspective, this year our young sprinters made a big impact with a total of five victories and all in all they were effective team mates throughout the season. This all bodes well for the future and I’m looking forward to seeing how we can do even better. But the thing I’m most excited and proud about is how we have been able to create such a great team spirit and atmosphere. This is very important for me and I hope we can continue to foster that culture.”
Back to news and opinion index page for links to archived stories | Commentary