The Dane Jonas Vingegaard, double winner of the Tour de France, and the American Sepp Kuss, winner of the last Tour of Spain, have extended their contract with the Visma-Lease a Bike team (ex-Jumbo), which has announced Thursday in a press release.
Vingegaard has extended until the end of 2028 and Kuss until 2027, specifies the Dutch team which held its official back-to-school presentation in Amsterdam. “This is excellent news for us,” said Dutch sporting director Merijn Zeeman, quoted by his team. We like to build long-term partnerships, and we are happy that (…) Sepp and Jonas feel the same way. We will continue to write sports history in the years to come.”
Jonas Vingegaard, for his part, said he felt “very comfortable in this team”. “We are very successful. (…) My future is here and I am proud of it,” confided the winner of the last two editions of the Grande Boucle who also confirmed his presence at the next Grand Départ at the end of June in Florence. For his part, Sepp Kuss judged that his team was “like a family”. “I feel at home here (…) Together we will be even more successful!”
Furthermore, the Dutch team has unveiled the program for Belgian Wout Van Aert, who will skip the Tour de France this year but will double the Giro and Tour of Spain before the Worlds in Zurich (Switzerland). Van Aert, however, cites the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix as his main objectives at the start of the season. “Winning one of these monuments remains a dream, and we will do everything to make this dream come true,” he declared, also quoted in a press release from his team. At 29, Van Aert, winner of the Tour of Britain in September, has only won one of the five great classics, Milan-Sanremo in 2020.
In 2023, the Jumbo-Visma team, which will become Visma-Lease a Bike on January 1, achieved the unprecedented feat of winning the Giro with Primoz Roglic (who is playing for the German team Bora-Hansgrohe next year) , the Tour de France with Vingegaard and the Vuelta with Kuss.