This article was produced in association with Sportive Breaks.
“I didn’t realise I should have brought my inhaler,” comes the voice from the middle row of the minivan. Brian, from Canada, is referring to the amount of dust being kicked up by the other two Visma-Lease a Bike vehicles in front of us, but he could also be referencing the lung-busting effort required to get up this white chalk wall in front of us. I squint and can easily imagine it as an icy precipice on a Himalayan peak, climbers requiring crampons and ice axes to overcome the vertiginous gradient, but the Cypress trees, thousands of fans wearing lycra and thick dusty air snaps me back into reality: this is Monte Sante Marie, Strade Bianche’s second longest sterrato sector at 11.5 kilometres, an otherwise unremarkable farm road that has become as legendary for us cycling folk as Trouée d’Arenberg or Muur van Geraardsbergen. What’s most striking to us in the VIP vehicles with Visma-Lease a Bike, however, is not the cycling history that has been written on this very road – Tadej Pogačar’s unanswerable 81km attack in 2024 is the most recent example – but how horrendously, impossibly, brutally steep these scarpate are. Television footage of this young race successfully transmits the beauty of the landscape, but it fails to accurately highlight the demanding, leg-sapping and taxing nature of the strade bianche. And these 16 white roads are relentless: one after another, up hill, down dale, su per la valle, giù per la valle, never once exceeding 400m of altitude, but neither ever easing in favour of flat terrain. It’s exhausting just sitting along in the back for the 213km journey, but at least we’re served with prosciutto ham, crisps, beer, TV footage and expert analysis from one of the foremost Dutch climbers of the early 90s, Eddy Bouwmans.
There are multiple ways to watch and feel this modern Italian Classic – in the centre of historic Siena or positioned roadside at Le Tolfe are the favoured spots – but this, the VIP way with Sportive Breaks and Visma-Lease a Bike (one of few teams to offer such experiences) is the way. Why view the race by the road just once, when you can witness it seven times?
Anticipation, excitement, nerves: these are what characterise the evening before a bike race – or in this specific case, a dusty storm. But pulling into the Borgo San Luigi, a country estate of small lodgings and a large pool which looks inviting but is just a little too chilly for an early March dip, it’s only calmness and readiness that is being radiated by the dozens of Visma-Lease a Bike staff milling around. Each of them is completing last-minute checks to ensure that the team’s 13 riders – seven in the men’s race, six in the women’s – are fully prepared to tackle the undulating gravel sectors that wriggle around the central Italian countryside.
In almost any other sport, you can’t take a look behind closed doors hours before a major competition, but here, as the sun goes down and splashes pink and orange streaks across the sky, I and 20 other guests are given access-all-areas passes to Visma’s mechanical truck. We’re allowed to touch the bikes (each rider has three), spin the countless spare wheels, ask the mechanics questions on tyre width (32mm), chain choice (special wax to reduce friction) and why different riders opt for different handlebars. It’s up close and personal with the machines on which the giants of the sport will race.
Exiting the truck, my nose picks up a whiff of cake. It’s coming from the nearby van of Remco (no, not that one) Henkes, a former Michelin restaurant cook and now the team’s performance chef. It’s banana cake, fresh out of the oven, and it’s irresistibly moist and tasty. The riders’ favourite though, explains Henkes, is the sports pizza: a floury mass with a sugary tomato-based sauce, piled with vegetables, a mixture of meat, pumpkin seeds and parmesan cheese. It satisfies and fuels the riders, but out here in the birthplace of pizza, I’m not sure I’ll find it on any restaurant menu. Still, though, at least there’s no pineapple.
Next, as team boss Richard Plugge confirms to one impressed fan that, yes, he is indeed the Richard Plugge from Netflix, team DS Maarten Wynants tells us the plan for the following day’s races: all-in for Pauline Ferrand-Prévot in the women’s race, and leadership will be shared among Attila Valter and Ben Tulett for the men. While the riders and team staff head for an early night, we dive down one of Siena’s quaint alleyways for a glass or two of Tuscan red. When in Italy…
“Make sure you take the correct bike,” quips one VIP guest to Jørgen Nordhagen, just as the Visma 20-year-old exits the team bus and heads to sign-on. It’s clear the Norwegian didn’t listen to the advice, though, for two minutes later he reappears – he’s taken Tulett’s bike by mistake. “Don’t say you weren’t warned!”
After watching the women’s race begin and spending an hour in the men’s team paddock, all guests pile into the three Visma minivans – mine is driven by Bouwmans, the white jersey winner of the 1992 Tour de France, and another by Theo Eltink, a former Rabobank rider. Bouwmans shows us the race route on VeloViewer, pointing out the various bottle and logistic points. Who knew feeding and hydrating cyclists was such a complicated business?
At the two-kilometre mark, we hop out of the van and just catch the men’s peloton race by as the first breakaway begins to form. The next viewing point is in 20 kilometres, but one road is closed, and a crash on the highway that we’ve been diverted onto brings us to a frustrating standstill. But Bouwman's a quick thinker – you don’t have a record of outfoxing climbers such as Richard Virenque and Robert Millar (now Philippa York) without a bit of smart thinking – and he manages to get us into position to watch the race again at kilometre 48. We’re back on track.
Hurtling down a country lane in pursuit of one of the race’s first gravel sectors, Bouwmans spins the van onto one of the stony tracks. After 30 seconds, however, he realises he’s entered a sector that comes much later in the race. And he’s entered the wrong way. Over a mound of gravel comes a speeding Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe car, its wheels barely touching the loose surface. They have made the same error as us. Dust kicks up, blinding our vision. “Bloody hell!” comes a shout from the back seat. “They’re taking their life into their own hands!” This is bike racing: the sports directors are as fast, furious and frantic as the riders. As if to illustrate the hazards, the five portable TVs in the minivan show Ferrand-Prévot sliding out on a corner. Ouch. She’s still in the leading group, but will this harm her victory chances?
Rejoining the correct road, we get stuck behind the broomwagon. Salvatore Puccio of the Ineos Grenadiers has fallen and he’s way off the back, sandwiched between the voiture balai and an ambulance. He’s in no rush – “I reckon he’s looking for a restaurant; it is lunchtime, after all,” says Bouwmans – but we are: both races are getting interesting and we want to see them with our own eyes. At the eight-kilometre Pieve a Salti sector, Bouwmans dons a team gilet and positions himself strategically with spare wheels in case a Visma rider requires one, while we stand by the stone monument that indicates the start of the dusty sector. A strung-out peloton displays a mass of chalky faces, torn jerseys and shorts, and blood pools from legs, elbows and chins. Beep! Beep! Beep! Team cars, balancing on two wheels as they leave the asphalt and enter the gravel, screech their impatience, polluting the air with burning clutches and the stink of rubber. Strade Bianche looks pretty on TV, but by the roadside it’s savage. “You don’t see this chaos sitting on the sofa,” laughs Steve, another one of the Canadian travellers. Jumping back into the van, stimulated by the pandemonium, we watch as Demi Vollering drops Anna van der Breggen in the closing stages to win the women’s race, Ferrand-Prévot valiantly finishing third. That’s the first Visma podium of the day – will there be another?
Our next viewpoint is towards the end of the five-star 11km Monte Sante Marie sec- tor that is dedicated to Fabian Cancellara, the only three-time winner of the race (for a matter of a couple more hours). It’s here that Brian regrets not packing his inhaler. The sterrato is uneven and the punchy climbs hit stronger each and every time. Despite there still being two hours of racing before they reach Siena, Monte Sante Marie is, as Pogačar correctly calculated 12 months earlier, the perfect place to detonate a race-winning bomb. And history is repeating itself, sort of. The Slovenian distances his rivals in the same spot yet again, but this time he has Tom Pidcock and breakaway survivor Connor Swift for company, and the trio race past us to the backdrop of a quintessentially Tuscan setting.
Up to Le Tolfe, the most iconic climb of the race, which the riders ascend twice, the crowds – and behaviour – are reminiscent of a Tour de France mountain stage: there’s beer, smoking barbecues, an assortment of fancy dress, horns and cow bells. Sitting in the Visma van, driving through the wall of noise and colour, we’re part of the party.
‘It’s Pogačar’s World and We’re Just Living In It’ reads a banner draped over a balcony, kilometres before our final and the race’s penultimate gravel sector, Colle Pinzuto. It’s right, but not right now. “No, no, no!” scream the TVs. Pogačar’s fallen! “He never falls!” we all remark. But he has this time, somersaulting into thorn bushes. All of a sudden, the Slovenian superstar’s expected victory isn’t so assured.
When we get to Colle Pinzuto, though, Pogačar is back at the front with Pidcock; the outcome is predictable once again. But still, there’s magic in the air. Driving up Santa Catarina, the race’s final ascent inside Siena’s city walls, people cheer us up the roughly-paved slope. Disembarking among the masses, feeling like the Very Important Persons our lanyards say we are, we walk into the 12th-century Piazza del Campo to watch the race’s denouement. Almost nine centuries after it was constructed, this striking amphitheatre is hosting as epic battles and champions as it did in mediaeval times.
Arriving back at the team bus, we resist cracking open the champagne – and the Visma-Lease a Bike team won’t be spraying any given that Pogačar takes that third, record-equalling win and Valter in 22nd is their highest-placed male rider – but over dinner and yet more Tuscan wine we reminisce on the events of a memorable, unforgettable day where we haven’t just seen and felt Strade Bianche, but been fully immersed in its majesty. Next stop for Bouwmans and Co.? Milano-Sanremo, the Belgian Classics, and all the Grand Tours. VIPing their way through the season – the best seat in cycling. This really is the way to experience bike racing.
To book your Ultimate VIP experience with Visma-Lease a Bike and Sportive Breaks at the world's biggest bike races, go to: sportivebreaks.com/team-visma-lease-a-bike-vip-experiences/
