Golden moment for Jumbo Visma which is dominating the northern classics with Laporte and Van Aert and is preparing the assault on the Tour de France , after winning the 2022 one with Jonas Vingegaard. Yet the strongest team, even at Fantacycling, in recent seasons, will be forced to find a new main sponsor. The news comes from the Netherlands, with wielerflits reporting that the team has just over a year to find a new sponsor.

Currently it is estimated that the overall budget of the team (which includes three cycling and skating teams) is around 36 million euros, one third of which comes from Jumbo , the other third from Visma and the remainder from other sponsors and lenders).  

A sponsorship that began in 2019 and has a five-year minimum agreement basis, with two-year notice for termination; the timing would have been accelerated by the death of the previous president Karel van Eerd and by the problems of his son Frits van Eerd, involved in a money laundering case. The decision now seems substantially taken and team manager Richard Plugge is looking around to try and replace a sponsor who has invested more than one hundred million euros in cycling in recent years: "We have other strong partners who support us and who are ready to invest more, so I'm not worried" - commented Plugge himself - "How will we face the next steps? How can we become a better team? With or without Jumbo, which is not our only partner anyway. Our challenge is to grow further, to win the Tour more often. And to do this, we need a strong commitment on the part of everyone”.

In any case, there would be a glimmer of continuing with Jumbo: “We hope to be able to continue with Jumbo, in memory of the late Karel van Eerd, for the next few years – continued Plugge – With them we want to take further great steps in after you. But we are also rethinking the situation, we know we have to think about how to approach the future and how to continue as an international team".

Photo: Sprint Cycling Agency