Team Picnic PostNL look ahead to 2025 season

With the opening races of the 2025 season just around the corner, Team Picnic PostNL gathered in Calpe with all three of their programs – Development, Men and Women – as they finalise their preparations for the new racing season in their exciting new colours.

Reflecting on 2024 and continuing to make steps

The 2024 campaign saw the Men’s program have their most successful seasons in terms of wins since 2015, racking up a brilliant 22 victories throughout the year. Alongside an epic one-two on the opening stage of the Tour de France, the team is exceptionally proud that 18 of the 22 victories came from graduates of their Development program. This once again highlights Team Picnic PostNL as one of the best in the peloton at developing young talents. 2025 will see their 22nd rider make the step-up to the Men’s program from the Development program.

The team’s Women’s program also made their mark at Tour de France Femmes. Sprinting to a superb win on the opening day with Charlotte Kool, the team then went on to win in yellow on the following stage: making for an incredibly special start on home Dutch soil.

Those results meant that the team set history as the first ever outfit to win the opening stage of the Tour de France with their Men’s and Women’s programs in the same calendar year – a truly exceptional feat.

A promising outlook – GC, sprints and development focus for Men’s program

In 2025, the team will continue their approach to racing with a focus on two different pillars throughout the season, with their GC and sprint group. Alongside the Grand Tours, the team will set their sights on multiple different races throughout the season; from stage-races, to one-day races, and from the sprints to the climbs.

On the Grand Tours, Team Picnic PostNL head coach Rudi Kemna said: “At the Giro d’Italia we really want to show ourselves as a team and play our part in the race each day. In the GC battle we will aim to race smartly and tactically and continue to assess how the race is shaping up as it progresses, while also having a focus on day results when the opportunities arise. We will have Romain [Bardet] who’s taking part in his last Grand Tour as a professional and Max [Poole] as our finishers for those challenging mountain days, while Casper [van Uden] is planned to make his three-week debut and will be supported by a good lead-out train to search for those day results in the sprints.”

“Topping 2024’s Tour de France will be hard, but we will once more head to the race with a focus primarily on going for stage results. In the more hilly and mountainous terrain we will have a strong group of attacking options such as the likes of Oscar [Onley] and Frank [van den Broek]. We want to make steps with Fabio [Jakobsen] in the earlier part of the season and then aim to head to the Tour de France with confidence, targeting the flat sprints with him as our finisher where he will be supported by the likes of Tobias [Lund Andresen].”

“We hope that Max will have learned a lot from the experience gained at the Giro, so with an ideal preparation, we will once more see where we can bring him in the overall standings come the end of the Vuelta. It is also an opportunity for several of our other young talents to make their Grand Tour debut and come into the process of riding a three-week race; where we will look for our chances each day to hunt for the best result possible.”

Women’s program

Speaking about the Women’s program Kemna continued: “In 2024 we stepped up to take some real quality wins, in particular the memorable Tour de France Femmes back-to-back wins with Charlotte [Kool] as our finisher, and impressive performances throughout the year from our young talents.”

“In 2025 we want to further build on the foundations we have made in previous years, targeting success in the sprints where we have one of the best lead-outs and sprint groups in the Women’s peloton.”

“Alongside our brilliant sprint group, we have a strong classics core where we can compete for top results over the cobbles in the Spring; with the likes of Pfeiffer [Georgi] and Franziska [Koch], Megan [Jastrab] or Charlotte if things come down to a fast finish. In those races we really believe in our strength across the board and want to use our numbers; racing smartly as a team.”

“We have a very talented and young GC group and in 2024 we saw the likes of Nienke [Vinke], Francesca [Barale] and Eleonora [Ciabocco] all make steps forward. With another year of racing in their legs, we hope to continue that trajectory with them and the rest of our climbing group. Nienke specifically will head to the Vuelta with the goal of preparing to ride for the GC and see how far she can come without any pressure on the result. We also welcome the very talented Marta [Cavalli] to the team and by working closely together with her we hope that she can return to the upper echelons of the sport with us and the idea is to head to the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France; however, we also need to allow the time for her to settle into her new surroundings and reset a little bit.”

22 talents promoted from Development program, aiming for more

Rounding off, Kemna concluded on the Development program: “As always, the general focus of our Development program will remain on the best development of our promising young athletes and continuing to bring the world’s best talents through to the WorldTour. 2024 saw us bring in quite a lot of fresh new faces to the group and the same goes for the 2025 season. We believe that we have a nice mix of riders and people, so we can really focus on their broader development – both on and off the bike. We’ve delivered a total of 22 talents through to our Men’s program since, something we are exceptionally proud of, and would like to build on even further after a successful season.”