{"id":227072,"date":"2025-10-26T20:53:05","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T20:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/227072\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T20:53:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T20:53:05","slug":"are-decathlon-building-cyclings-new-best-leadout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/227072\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Decathlon building cycling&#8217;s new best leadout?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Bol has been a sprinter for many years but over his time in Astana he&#8217;s also developed himself as a leadout man. \u201cI&#8217;ve also helped a lot of other riders this year, such as Max Kanter. Sometimes it&#8217;s frustrating to sprint for yourself and then find time and again that I just don&#8217;t have the top speed. I do enjoy racing at the highest level, so in this case, I choose to stay at the highest level and do lead-outs,&#8221; he explains.<\/p>\n<p>The gold standard being Lidl-Trek&#8217;s leadout for Jonathan Milan, it is something the French team could achieve with its new men, taking into consideration Kooij&#8217;s talent. \u201cThere&#8217;s a trend in cycling that the level is getting higher and higher, and it&#8217;s getting faster and faster. You&#8217;re seeing more and more real sprint trains. You still need them, but you hardly ever see five guys in a line anymore. Teamwork is a bit more subtle.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Forming the pieces of a puzzle\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Decathlon picked out the men very particularly and with the Visma rider coming in with a reported salary of \u20ac3 million, the most out of any sprinter ever in the sport, it&#8217;s a major investment. There was a big incentive for Daan Hoole to join the masterplan. \u201cIt was a difficult choice and I hesitated for a long time, but in the end I decided to go. I had a great time at Lidl-Trek and the team is doing well, of course, so it was certainly not an easy choice,&#8221; he told the Dutch news outlet. In Lidl-Trek he had a great season, winning at the Giro d&#8217;Italia and being part of an extreme success with the American team, but he also wants to have opportunities of his own and be part of a new project.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt had been on my mind since the spring, but after Roubaix I decided to do it. I hesitated for a long time, but I think this is a good move. Mads [Pedersen] was disappointed, but he also understood why I was leaving. I&#8217;m going to miss Mads, of course, and he&#8217;ll miss me too, because we&#8217;ve had a great four years together. Sometimes that&#8217;s just how it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDecathlon was also interested, but for me, it was more interesting with Olav. I&#8217;ll have a bit more freedom in the classics, because we don&#8217;t really have a leader like Mads. I want to continue to develop in the time trial, and for the rest, it will mainly be with Olav and the sprint train,&#8221; he explains.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"280\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1139281081-650b34d9bd874.jpg@webp.webp\" class=\"w-auto h-auto\" alt=\"1139281081\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Hoole has had his best season up to date and could be a key piece of Decathlon&#8217;s new leadout and classics team. @Sirotti<\/p>\n<p>At age 26, there is still room for development, and Hoole could be a very interesting figure for the individual time trials if he continues to evolve. \u201cWe talked about time trials for a long time, especially with my height. It all looked good, and if it hadn&#8217;t, I wouldn&#8217;t have made the move. It&#8217;s about my frame size: Decathlon has started producing a size larger, especially for me, which shows their confidence. And I&#8217;m also getting some custom stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDecathlon is a great team, and Olav is, of course, a top sprinter,&#8221; he assures. &#8220;The other guys who are coming along are also good riders and nice guys, so all in all, it&#8217;s a great group. We can be ambitious with them. That makes it a really nice project.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Bol has been a sprinter for many years but over his time in Astana he&#8217;s also developed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-227072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}