Team Picnic PostNL power to sprint win in Türkiye

Exceptional lead-out and Team Picnic PostNL ride finished off by Casper van Uden in Türkiye sprint win

After displaying some strong lead-outs in the opening stages in Türkiye, Team Picnic PostNL remained determined and took their spoils on Thursday afternoon in a sprint finish win with Casper van Uden.

A hard day of racing saw a fast tempo throughout the afternoon, but Team Picnic PostNL were steadfast and rode excellently throughout the day, always ensuring they were represented at the front and in the moves. Timo de Jong was part of a promising ten rider group, but that was brought back on the last climb of the day. On that ascent the two-striped squad showed excellent fighting spirit for all six of the riders to make it over the top of the climb in the reduced peloton. From there, their full attention turned to setting up a fast finale with Casper van Uden; confident and steadfast in the belief that he had the speed to finish off the lead-out. In an almost picture perfect fashion, the team still had four riders together at just over one kilometre to go, peeling off one-by-one and bringing Van Uden deep into the final and in an ideal position. Not hesitating when another rider jumped early, Van Uden sprung into his wheel and used that slipstream as a slingshot, powering past him and able to celebrate a brilliant team victory come the line.

Van Uden reflected: “I feel really happy. The first few days were a bit of a struggle, I already had quite a few crashes this year, so I had to find my feet a little bit. The boys kept believing in me, the team kept believing in me and I could show them today that I could do it so it’s nice to reward all their confidence and hard work. It just feels really good to be able to give something back. To be able to give back to all of the boys, all of the staff, everyone at the races and also back at HQ. It’s really nice to reward them for the hard work they do, and also myself too. The whole lead-out was really good today, we all passed the climbs in the first group. We’re just still trying to learn and learn from our mistakes, but I think we’re doing a good job this way and we hope to keep it up.”