In recent years, turning on the television around four in the afternoon, in August, in search of the broadcast of the lap, it was synonymous with seeing on screen a towering 1.84m Dutchman rolling in the sun alongside a handful of other runners. A brave adventurer who challenged the platoon day in and day out. his name is Jetse Bol (The Netherlands, 32 years old), a cycling globetrotter we can call Flying Dutchman. Bol is tied to those leaks, your best option to shine on the asphalt, like the legend of the ship, condemned for eternity to sail the seas without returning to port.
“You are focused for five hours. It is not very different from riding in the peloton, only that you are calmer by riding with fewer cyclists in the relay. We all have a common goal. I do not have great memories, but a lot of suffering. Last year, in the stage of Valencia (La Vuelta) we were so fast… In the end you end up dead. I know that I am not the fastest cyclist in the world or the best climber and I have to attack, look for my options in a breakaway. On a good day, I can win.” explains Jetse to AS during his participation in the oman tour, a first race of the year for him that he sees with good eyes: “I really like to start here, outside of Europe, where there is more tranquility and less stress. They are very wide roads that work well for me, since the first races it always costs a bit.With the weather, better heat than rain and cold to start with. I ran here in 2014 and I had never seen dromedaries in Spain by the side of the roads. We are in the middle of nowhere. Here cycling does not have so many fans, it is another type of race.
Bol took his first steps as a professional in the legendary rabbank (current Jumbo-Visma), home of great champions such as Denis Menchov and Óscar Freire, but since 2015 he had to carve out a niche far from the upper echelons of cycling, knocking on other doors… And they were opened to him in Colombia, in the ranks of a Postobón apple where the Dutch learned a new language and another cycling culture. That transition came in handy for him to quickly adapt to what he calls home since 2018: the Burgos BH. “The work of the teams is the same, but I like Burgos a lot. We are not very big, we are more like a family. staff and the cyclists we have a good relationship and it’s like being at home,” Jetse says with a big smile.
The Dutchman, whose work ‘office’ is in Girona (where he lives), is in the most satisfying moment of his career after almost four years in our country: “I really like Spain. It’s my fifth season here and I’m in my place. I used to race on the World Tour and I was number 28 on the team. I don’t have to be the leader and here I have opportunities, more freedom. To get a good result we have very good sprinters, like Peñalver, but we don’t win 20 races a year. On the World Tour I would work in the peloton for the sprinters or pulling for the climber who could attack on the pass.”
But, after so many years, how does a Dutch person see current cycling in their country from a distance? “Cycling is like the tide, it goes up and down. Two years ago, The Netherlands was happy with a guy on the Tour de France podium (Kruijswijk). Now we are very well, but you never know. It all depends on the talents there are each year. DSM and Jumbo-Visma have their own high-level subsidiary, and that helps cycling a lot. you never know and we may have another, lower time,” valued a Bol that, without a doubt, found its place between Burgos and Girona. When will he return to ‘sailing’ on asphalt? Flying Dutchman?
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