{"id":544562,"date":"2026-03-16T18:33:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/544562\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T18:33:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:33:13","slug":"i-was-starting-to-go-on-autopilot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/544562\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI was starting to go on autopilot\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fabian Cancellara\u2019s Tudor team has had a Dutch team director on board since this winter.Addy Engels<\/a> left the Visma team after ten years to join the Swiss project, which has gotten off to a strong start this year. IDLProCycling.com spoke with him about his move and what else is in store for the team.<\/p>\n

Tudor didn\u2019t miss a beat at the start of the season. As of mid-March, it ranks fourteenth in the WorldTour standings, the highest of all Pro Continental teams. The team achieved this by, among other things, placing two riders\u2014Luca Mozzato and Matteo Trentin\u2014on the podium at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and securing top-ten finishes in the Tour Down Under (Marco Brenner) and, more recently, Paris-Nice with Mathys Rondel.<\/p>\n

And then they also had their share of bad luck, with new signing Stefan K\u00fcng suffering a broken femur and Rick Pluimers crashing on the Molenberg in the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. Sprinter Arvid de Kleijn has also not yet seen any action this year.<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"trentin-pluimers-kung\"\/Tudor is doing well both in the foreground and in the backgroundTudor isn\u2019t just doing well in the foreground: by securing riders like Pluimers and Rondel on long-term contracts, they\u2019re also making solid moves behind the scenes.<\/a> The team\u2019s professional approach was the reason Engels decided to make the move from Visma | Lease a Bike<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Engels joined the Dutch team in 2014, when the squad was still known as LottoNL-Jumbo. Over the years he played a role in the team\u2019s transformation into one of the dominant forces in professional cycling. Grand Tour victories, Monument wins and numerous stage successes followed, with riders such as Jonas Vingegaard, Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d and Wout van Aert becoming some of the sport\u2019s biggest names.<\/p>\n

Despite that success, Engels felt the need for something different after ten years. \u201cI had a fantastic time with the team and experienced incredible things,\u201d he explained. \u201cBut after a decade you notice that certain processes start to become routine. I felt I was starting to go a bit on automatic pilot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"robertHow does Engels describe his role at Tudor?<\/p>\n

\u201cMy role is once again more focused on the sporting side of things, whereas at Visma I was more in the background,\u201d he continues. \u201cI was certainly involved in races and sporting matters, but I also handled a lot of logistical tasks. Now I\u2019m stepping back into the spotlight on the sporting side, with a diverse program. I won\u2019t be doing the Flemish races: they\u2019re wonderful to watch, but even as a rider I never raced there,\u201d says the former Quick Step and Rabobank rider.<\/p>\n

\u2018Not that it was bad: I\u2019d been with Visma for ten years. And over the last two years, I noticed things were starting to run a bit on autopilot. I enjoyed it immensely, I had a great time,\u2019 Engels explains. \u2018But I felt that I could still take the plunge and try something new. Ultimately, that was the deciding factor.\u2019<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"addy-engels\"\/Engels has found his place at Tudor<\/p>\n

After a few months, he realizes he made the right choice. \u201cIt\u2019s in the little things. You meet a lot of new people, and that gives you a fresh burst of energy in a way. I did race once with Rick Pluimers for Visma\u2019s development team, but other than that, they\u2019re all new faces.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018You know most of them, but then again, you don\u2019t,\u2019 says Engels, who has, of course, been around the block for a long time. \u2018I already feel quite at home; the chemistry is good, and I\u2019m happy to be at Tudor. Hopefully, I can work for this team for a long time to come, because I foresee a very bright future.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018We have good riders, but we can certainly still grow in terms of depth,\u2019 he explains. \u2018That\u2019s the most important thing, especially given our ambition to enter the WorldTour with the cycle that has now begun anew. At the same time, it was very good that the decision was made to lay a foundation first: Fabian Cancellara and the team did that very well.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fabian Cancellara\u2019s Tudor team has had a Dutch team director on board since this winter.Addy Engels left the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[269742,64,63,784,172195,85,54302,23372],"class_list":["post-544562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-addy-engels","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-idl-productions","tag-sports","tag-tudor-pro-cycling-team","tag-visma-lease-a-bike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}