The distant tick-a-tack of helicopter blades whirring growing ever louder; the muffled talking amongst team staff as they double check their finish bags; a building sense of excitement amongst fans as they hug the barriers, fighting to get a glimpse of their favourite riders – all for it to be over in a flash as the peloton speeds past at 70 kilometres per hour.
A quick history, literally.
Sprint finishes are an exciting part of our sport and for Team dsm-firmenich PostNL they have been a backbone and strong pillar of the team’s success since its formation back in 2008: with the team having taken over 200 sprint wins since then across their three programs.
Harking back to the likes of Kenny van Hummel who swept up multiple races for the team in its infancy in the late noughties, before the development of German sprint powerhouses Marcel Kittel and John Degenkolb in the 2010s, to more recent Grand Tour success with the likes of Michael Matthews and Alberto Dainese – sprinting is something that has always been part of the team’s DNA.
Team dsm-firmenich PostNL head coach Rudi Kemna explains more: “We are proud of our history in the sprint finishes as a team. It was an area that we really wanted to focus on since the beginning and it has brought us a lot of success as one of the most dominant sprint trains in the Men’s peloton. Since then, competition has become more tough and things have changed, but we have continued to keep it as one of our main pillars and performance areas and taken results at the highest level of the sport in recent years. This applies not only to our Men’s program but also our Development program and Women’s program too, such as a famous win on the Champs-Elysees at the first modern Tour de France Femmes.”
“For us, sprinting reflects the ideas that we aspire to as a team as you need everyone to work truly together as a cohesive group, bringing the sprint finisher into a place to go for it at the line. Everyone in the group and train is important and plays their own role in the team getting a result at the end of the day – it is impossible to do it on your own.”