{"id":762298,"date":"2026-06-26T11:11:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T11:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/762298\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T11:11:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T11:11:11","slug":"mike-teunissen-and-how-the-tour-de-france-has-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/762298\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Teunissen and how the Tour de France has changed"},"content":{"rendered":"

In just over a week, Mike Teunissen<\/a> will be lining up at the start of the Tour de France for the seventh time. Teunissen claimed the yellow jersey in Brussels in 2019, but has seen the Tour de France change over the years. According to the Dutchman, it\u2019s becoming increasingly difficult for teams like XDS-Astana to compete for a podium finish. He explains why to IDL Pro Cycling<\/p>\n

Teunissen, who is set to extend his contract with the Kazakh team, felt this year that his participation in the Tour wasn\u2019t strictly necessary. Still, XDS-Astana continues to rely on him. He has an eye for positioning for team leader Harold Tejada, skills as a lead-out man for sprinter Max Kanter, and a role to play as road captain. He himself isn\u2019t a fan of the term, but he is indispensable to the team.<\/p>\n

And so Teunissen will \u201cjust\u201d be there again on July 4 in Barcelona, hoping he can power his way up all the mountains and make it to Paris three weeks later. \u201cAlthough the Tour has become very tough for a rider like me,\u201d says the man who finished an impressive tenth at Paris-Roubaix this spring<\/a> and recently made his mark again at the Baloise Belgium Tour, where team leader Kanter also finished in the top five three times.<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"sirotti<\/p>\n

Mike Teunissen in the yellow jersey in 2019.<\/p>\n

Interview with Mike Teunissen Ahead of the Tour de France<\/p>\n

Was this the intention behind the Baloise Belgium Tour?
“Yes, that’s right. Actually, we wanted to get some race rhythm going here with Max [Kantar], to give him a little support. It’s also a great race, and we had a strong team here, which allowed us to try to compete with the absolute best. Besides, there were a few opportunities for me here and there during the stages, but of course, you have to have strong legs for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was it actually the plan all year long to take Max to the Tour?
\u201cYes, that was indeed the plan going in. The idea was to win stages at Paris-Nice, and then we shifted our focus to the second half of the season, with Hungary, the Baloise Belgium Tour, and then the Tour.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tour again.
\u201cYeah, though it\u2019s a bit of a mixed bag. Especially if I actually get selected, it\u2019ll be really cool to be there. It\u2019s also great to be part of a team that has a shot at winning stages. But in my opinion, the Tour de France has really changed in recent years. These days, there are very few stages that end in a bunch sprint; everything has become so tough. But on the other hand, it\u2019s also a great challenge to go for those stages and hopefully achieve a good result.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first opportunity for sprinters doesn’t come until day five.
\u201cI haven\u2019t really looked at the route book very closely yet. I know we\u2019re starting with a team time trial and that the second day will be tough, but other than that, I\u2019d rather take it day by day. If you say that the fifth day is an opportunity, then I\u2019ll take your word for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s not like you adjust your entire preparation just to get through those first four days better in preparation for that sprint?
“Well, in the Tour they sometimes say you can grow into the race, but with the way racing is done these days, you have to be on your game right from day one. You have to make sure you don\u2019t lose any time. Especially with that team time trial coming up. We have riders like Harold Tejada, who\u2019s going for the general classification, so as a team we just have to be sharp right from the start.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did you guys train a lot for the team time trial?
“Yeah, quite a bit. We did a specific training session at altitude every three days. Hoping we\u2019ll finish tenth instead of eighteenth. Yeah, that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing it for, right?”<\/p>\n

How should we assess Max? He\u2019s very consistent, and of course he won that stage in Paris-Nice.
\u201cThat stage in Paris-Nice<\/a> was a great moment for him. But here, it\u2019s clear once again that the competition is a cut above. We have no choice but to do our best, and things went really well in Paris-Nice. That, of course, remains a great experience and shows that surprises are sometimes possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

So we can certainly dream, but realistically speaking, it\u2019s going to be very difficult. For him, it\u2019s his first Tour, and that always takes some getting used to. That was actually true for Biniam back then, too; it wasn\u2019t until his second year that everything really fell into place. So who knows\u2014maybe this will be a learning year, or maybe everything will just fall into place right away. We\u2019ll see.’<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"max-kanter\"\/<\/p>\n

Max Kanter won a stage at Paris-Nice.<\/p>\n

While most teams headed to the Sierra Nevada, you were in Austria in May for an altitude training camp. Why?
\u201cThis was sponsored, so from a financial standpoint, it made more sense to go there. We were also able to drive straight there from the Tour of Hungary. And it\u2019s really beautiful there. Good weather and very peaceful. I think there were as many as eighteen teams in the Sierra Nevada, so we were happy not to see any other teams there.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been to the Sierra Nevada often enough myself. And altitude training is never really a walk in the park anyway, so it doesn\u2019t really matter where you are. Although I do always really like the Sierra Nevada\u2014it has a certain charm. As far as I\u2019m concerned, we can definitely go back there next time, but the commercial side of things, you know\u2026’ (wink)<\/p>\n

But as someone from Limburg, you do speak a little German, right? So you can get by with that.
\u201cOh yeah, haha, definitely! I was able to follow everything just fine. Austrian German is actually a little different from standard German, but it went well.\u201d<\/p>\n

First, there\u2019s also the Dutch National Championship. What do you think about that, with legs like yours?
\u201cBut I\u2019m pretty familiar with the area, since I train there often. It\u2019ll be tough. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s my ideal course, but we\u2019re going to make it a great day no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n

What would it mean to you to become Dutch champion again, if you were still able to win that jersey?
\u201cI used to have really big ambitions for that. Now I see it more as a nice day when my family can come watch and a good training session leading up to the Tour. I no longer put pressure on myself to win there. It\u2019s mainly a good motivator for what\u2019s still to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In just over a week, Mike Teunissen will be lining up at the start of the Tour de…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,214381,82,262636,199454],"class_list":["post-762298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-mike-teunissen","tag-sports","tag-tour-de-france-2026","tag-xds-astana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}