from one hat-trick to another, a season of monopoly for Jumbo-Visma

Primoz Roglic on the Giro, Jonas Vingegaard on the Tour de France, and now Sepp Kuss on the Vuelta. This is the spoils of the Jumbo-Visma bees in 2023. The Dutch team became, on Sunday September 17, the first team in history to win the three Grand Tours in the same season. A hat-trick that hides another, since the Jumbo-Visma also had the luxury of monopolizing the first three places in the general classification in the Tour of Spain, Sepp Kuss being accompanied on the podium by his two teammates, Jonas Vingegaard and Primoz Roglic.

The pink of the Giro, the yellow of the Tour de France and the red of the Vuelta. The three colors designating the leader of each race were proudly displayed by the Jumbo-Visma in the streets of Madrid, with a unique outfit and personalized bikes for its three leaders. “This hat-trick [sur les trois Grands Tours], we already had it in mind last November. It had to be done step by step.”confided Richard Plugge, manager of the team, at the microphone ofEurosport SATURDAY.

A Giro poorly embarked then overturned

Although the plan had a perfect outcome, its execution had started badly. In May, Covid-19 came to put a spoke in the wheels of the Jumbo Visma (in addition to the fall in training of Jan Tratnik), forced to make four changes a few hours before the big start. Built around Primoz Roglic, the Dutch team kept the same objective, “win the Giro”in the words of sports director Mark Reef.

The spiral of bad luck was reversed, and it was Primoz Roglic’s main opponent, Remco Evenepoel, who was overtaken by Covid-19 after 9 stages, while he wore the leader’s pink jersey with more than 40 seconds ahead of the Slovenian. Once the former world champion was on the floor, Roglic limited the damage in his duel with Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) before reversing the race during the penultimate stage. His victory in the Monte Lussari time trial, despite a chain break mid-climb, allowed him to recover the pink jersey just in time for the parade in Rome. Enough to ward off fate, three years after his failure in the time of La Planche des Belles Filles on the Tour.

If the victory in the general classification was decided by 14 seconds in the Giro, the Tour de France will be less close. With 7 minutes and 29 seconds ahead of his runner-up Tadej Pogacar in Paris, Jonas Vingegaard crushed the Grande Boucle and made an impression in the third week with his supersonic time trial between Passy and Combloux, which saw him take more than a minute and thirty seconds ahead of his rival from the UAE team in just 22.4 kilometers. Stunned, Pogacar did not recover and lost almost six additional minutes the next day in the queen stage and the ascent of the terrible Col de la Loze.

Hat-trick on the same Grand Tour, a first since 1966

Behind the coronation of these two monsters of the peloton lies an impressive collective effort. The Jumbo-Visma bees sting in swarms and are the type to suffocate their adversaries in the passes while having numerical superiority. Their leader is never alone in crucial moments. The key man is Sepp Kuss. Since his recruitment in 2018, the American has been part of all his team’s Grand Tour victories. So, despite the fatigue gained during the Giro and the Tour, the latter was selected to return to the Vuelta.

Landed with the role of teammate of Jonas Vingegaard and Primoz Roglic in Spain, Kuss became a leader through the circumstances of the race. A breakaway taken in the mountains on the sixth stage which placed him in second position in the general classification, then some difficulties for the red jersey Lenny Martinez three days later, and here he is leader of the Tour of Spain. A position which becomes ideal when Remco Evenepoel cracks in the Tourmalet and the first three in the general are the three climbers from the Jumbo-Visma. It is then difficult for Jonas Vingegaard and Primoz Roglic to attack the one who largely contributed to their greatest feats of arms.

To satisfy everyone within the Jumbo-Visma, the two original leaders shared the stage victories (two each). From the Tourmalet to the Angliru, the two queen stages of the Tour of Spain saw the yellow and black triumph with historic triplets, 1-2-3 at the finish, which concretize the team’s motto “Samen Winnen” (“Win together”). These triplets lead to another: a 100% Jumbo-Visma podium in Madrid. We had to go back to 1966 to find a precedent for this performance in the final general classification of a Grand Tour, with the hat-trick of the Kas-Kascol team in the Vuelta.

A domination that raises doubts

As impressive as it is, such domination does not necessarily delight enthusiasts and arouses the suspicion of many observers. Jonas Vingegaard had already had to explain this during the Tour de France, and Sepp Kuss was, in turn, questioned on the subject in Spain: “Cheating or doping is just out of the question for me. Losing is part of sport. One of the most important things for me in sport is accepting that sometimes you’re not good enough.”.

“The bicycle pays for its past. It’s logical that we wonder when there is individual or collective domination. But without proof, I will not go to that terrain. We did not wait for this Vuelta to know that they were the bestsays Thomas Voeckler, former runner and consultant France Televisions. They are not guys who come out of nowhere, and when they are at their best, they are better than the others, especially since Pogacar was not there in Spain, and Evenepoel had a blow soft. For me this ranking is astonishing but not surprising”.

Julien Jurdie, sporting director of AG2R-Citroën is also impressed and explains this domination by an unparalleled wealth of staff at the microphone of the RTBF. “They have the best teammates in the world. Guys who would be leaders for us. Personally, I spend a lot of time with them, whether racing or training in the Sierra Nevada. We feel very goodAlthough there is great professionalism. II want to believe it and not have any doubts.”

A calendar designed to shine

The three leaders of the Jumbo-Visma also focused on a calendar focused solely on stage races, in order to best prepare for the Grand Tours, unlike Tadej Pogacar or Remco Evenepoel, both engaged in a race for the Grand Tours. Landmarks. The Slovenian stood out in the Flandrian and Ardennes classics, while the Belgian won Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

“In today’s cycling, you have to calculate everything. The calendar obviously matters. I can’t imagine that we could be present in the final of the Tour of Flanders and then perform well on several Grand Tours”, notes Thomas Voeckler. With this calendar, the Dutch team not only won the three Grand Tours, it also won eight other stage races, including Tirreno-Adriatico, the Tour of Catalonia and that of the Basque Country.

The three headliners of Jumbo-Visma are still under contract next year. A new lieutenant has already been recruited, in the person of Matteo Jorgenson (Movistar). “We have already started to think about what we can do better next year”, assures Richard Plugge. No question for the boss of the best team in the world to be satisfied with the raid of 2023.