Forever the man who stunned the world in Brussels in 2019, when the stand-in sprinter edged Peter Sagan by a tyre's width to put on the first yellow jersey of that Tour. Now 33 and starting his seventh Tour, the ex-cyclocross world champion is XDS Astana's finisseur-turned-mentor, piloting Max Kanter through the final kilometre and patrolling crosswind stages. As he says himself, pure bunch sprints are rare now — which makes his tactical brain all the more valuable.
Palmarès
- Tour de France stage 1 winner + yellow jersey (2019)
- Vuelta a España stage 1 (TTT) winner (2022)
- U23 cyclo-cross world champion (2013)
- 7th Paris–Roubaix (2019)
- ZLM Tour & Four Days of Dunkirk GC winner (2019)
Cut-out factHis 2019 Tour stage win made him the first Dutchman to wear the yellow jersey since Erik Breukink in 1989 — and he only sprinted because team leader Dylan Groenewegen had crashed.
The squad
Riding the 2026 Tour with Sergio Higuita, Davide Ballerini, Aaron Gate, Max Kanter, Harold Tejada, Simone Velasco, Nicolas Vinokurov — see the full XDS Astana team page.
Portrait: AI paper-collage render (gpt-image-2) after a reference photograph — source: Wikimedia Commons, author: Nicola, license: CC BY-SA 4.0.
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