Team DSM to continue focus on young riders despite talent drain

Few WorldTour teams devote the level of resources to rider development than Team DSM and few have to watch as so many of these riders leave for big-budget teams when they find success. Yet the Dutch team is staying the course in 2023 despite slipping down the UCI team rankings. Team DSM scored enough points to secure a place in the WorldTour but finished 20th in the UCI rankings in 2022 and 21st the year before.

Sports director and former rider Roy Curvers admits the team is in a rebuilding phase after losing young talents like 2020 Giro d'Italia runner-up Jai Hindley and Lennard Kämna to Bora-Hansgrohe, Marc Hirschi to UAE Team Emirates, and now Vuelta a España stage winner Thymen Arensman to Ineos Grenadiers.

"Yes, we lost already a lot of names that we developed in the past," Curvers tells Cyclingnews. "But we lost also a lot of names that started with us as no-names, and then developed, and became really good riders with us, scoring really good points."

Team DSM plans to stay the course and continue giving young riders opportunities to develop as well as relying on experienced Grand Tour racers like Romain Bardet and Classics men who have Paris-Roubaix winner John Degenkolb as a mentor. 

Curvers knows the team may not be able to match the salaries of Ineos or Jumbo-Visma.

"When you look back 10 years ago, you had Team Sky which had a bigger budget than most of the other WorldTour teams. And all the 10-15 teams behind Sky were more or less the same. There was not a €5 million difference between the second and the 15th or 18th teams in the WorldTour. Now the budget difference between these teams and all the rest is big.

"We cannot change from today to tomorrow how much money we can offer everybody. When the starting point of keeping a rider is only on salary, then it's likely that we lose him to a team from the top four or five of the WorldTour. What we should aim to do is to create an environment where a rider knows they are in an environment where they can get the best out of themselves. We try to motivate more on the sporting side and give opportunities that we can offer to riders that those big teams cannot give."

The talent drain was evident when the UCI promotion/relegation scheme went into effect for 2023 and only the top 18 teams of 2020-2022 remained. Team DSM were 16th in the triennial rankings but barely 1,000 points ahead of Lotto-Soudal, who were relegated.

Curvers says the last two seasons came after four very successful years. The team believes the current crop of young riders will bring in results over the next three-year WorldTour cycle. 

However the UCI, when confirming the three-year WorldTour licences, said that Team DSM's licence for the second and third years are conditional on the provision "of additional documents related to the financial criterion," indicating the team's funding needs still to be confirmed.

"We are confident that when we keep building and expanding this young core, we won't be in the same boat in three years," Curvers said.

There were more flashes of big potential from Italian Alberto Dainese, who won a stage of the Giro d'Italia, from Sam Welsford with a podium in the Scheldeprijs, and Andreas Leknessund who won the Arctic Race of Norway.

The team have promoted six riders from the development team, giving Oscar Onley a five-year contract, and Tobias Lund Andresen and Lorenzo Milesi three-year deals. Pavel Bittner and Casper van Uden joined as trainees this year, and Max Poole will join on a two-year contract in 2023.

They've also kept 22-year-old American Kevin Vermaerke and Australian climber Chris Hamilton and picked up compatriot Matthew Dinham - all staying through 2025.

Onley, 20, had a brilliant performance in the CRO Race, going toe-to-toe with Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard and finishing in third overall. Van Uden won the points classification of the Tour de l'Avenir and was fourth in the Scheldeprijs.

The next step is developing consistency, Curvers says. 

"These guys are still really young, they showed flashes of really big potential. But they are not at an age yet where you can ask help from them on a weekly basis. We just keep on building with the aim to become more consistent. So that also gives our team a bigger backbone with these guys growing into more maturity."

There won't be a huge rush for the young riders to get results, however. 

"We have to take steps with a young group of guys. You cannot rush to put them on the highest podium or in the races that give the highest points. But I think when these guys develop three years more, they will score more points every year. And in that way, we will not be so afraid that in three years we are again facing relegation.

"If everything goes according to plan, then we should score from this year on more points every year. And when we do that, we're not in trouble."

Welsford, Van Uden and Dainese will be the team's sprinters after the departure of Cees Bol, and the team aims to rejuvenate the lead-out train to have sprinters "competing with world's best just like we did in the past in the years when we were Argos or Giant-Alpecin".

When asked if there was some quality in recruits that could signal the potential for greatness of the scale of a Remco Evenepoel aside from power, Curvers said riders need to have a strong drive to learn and improve.

"If I have to point at one thing that almost all big guys in the sport have it's that thing. A) being really talented and B) being almost unhealthily eager in the search for improvement."

Other qualities include resilience because cycling is rife with setbacks like illness and injury.

"That's also the defining thing. Like Evenepoel - everybody said from the moment he started his cycling career that everything he touched turned into gold. But last year he barely raced because of that injury. That was a major setback. I think he even came back from that injury as a better athlete. Everybody knew he was one of the most gifted riders in the bunch, but still, almost everybody also questioned whether he was going to really be a guy who was going to compete for a GC in a Grand Tour. And basically the first time he aims for it, he already got it."

Whether Team DSM have another Jai Hindley-style giant leap to Grand Tour contention remains to be seen.

"I think we can conclude that we have a lot of guys on that side who are improving, but a guy like Jai - that was all of a sudden really quick," Curvers said. "That's something that is always nice, but those are also hard to predict. So I think you just have to make sure that you have a lot of guys improving.

"If we make one step ahead in the development of the majority of our riders, I think we have a successful season, and then more results and more victories will be the outcome of that of that step that everybody individually and we as a team make."