The vibes are bad, so they say. They’re needlessly strict and rigid. They don’t let riders lower their saddle height without permission, and they even hand out homework. Yep, you’ve no doubt heard the rumours, gossip and hearsay about Team DSM-Firmenich PostNL. And the Dutch team don't necessarily deny all this, pointing to a centralised system of logging all data, employing and trusting in experts in each specific field, and operating a system that, by their own admission, works for some and doesn’t work for others.
But mud, especially the kind that has been thrown at DSM in the past few years, sticks, solidifies and becomes resistant to removal. For all their wins – 19 this year, five more than the megabucks of Ineos Grenadiers – and all their good initiatives – the first team to introduce the same minimum wage across men’s, women’s and development teams – the team that previously went by Sunweb, Giant-Alpecin and Skil-Shimano have mostly been a byword for mockery and derision ever since their halcyon days of Marcel Kittel and Tom Dumoulin.
Yet perhaps it’s time to change the narrative. DSM have ridden at least one Grand Tour every season since 2011, and every year they’ve always won a stage, something that Groupama-FDJ, Movistar and EF Education-EasyPost, teams with similar budgets to DSM, can’t proudly boast when wining and dining potential sponsors.
On stage five of the 2024 Vuelta a España, a sleepy and roasting hot day south towards Seville, the city that brought the world flamenco, tip-tapping his way onto DSM’s Grand Tour winners roll call was 21-year-old Pavel Bittner. Czech, a cyclocross rider-cum-sprinter, a product of DSM’s development team that continues to churn out talent year-on-year, Bittner had threatened to win in his maiden Grand Tour by scoring two victories at the Vuelta a Burgos, the traditional warm-up race.
He was fifth and sixth earlier in the week, but in Andalusia’s largest city, he bypassed the minor podium spots and jumped straight to number one, gliding out of the wheels of Wout van Aert with the elegance of the street dancers that the permanently warm city is famous for, and darting towards the line with the power of a bullfighting matador. It needed a photo finish to separate Bittner and Van Aert, but when it eventually came, it was clear: Bittner had taken it.
And so he continues the much-mocked team’s glorious summer, one that began with Romain Bardet taking Tour de France yellow in late June and continued with Charlotte Kool winning the first two stages of the Tour de France Femmes (ensuring they became the first-ever team to win the first stage of the men’s and women’s races) right to the present day of Bittner taking his first victory in a three-week race.
It’s not to say all is perfect at the team. Why, for example, has marquee signing Fabio Jakobsen been so far off the pace since joining in the winter? Why did big talents like Marc Hirschi, Thymen Arensman and Lorenzo Milesi all judge other teams as better destinations to fulfil their potential? And why are they nestled deep in the quagmire in the fight to avoid demotion from the WorldTour at the end of 2025?
They’re all reasonable questions – and doubts can be levelled at all teams – but what is undeniable is that Team DSM-Firmenich PostNL, the peloton’s de facto youth house, a place where the aspirants and future stars are given ample opportunity to experience top-level racing and all the spills, thrills, highs and lows that entails, have a philosophy they steadfastly believe in and obdurately stick to, and an ideology that, despite their critics, garners results. Bittner is their latest and most deserving graduate.
