TEAM PICNIC POSTNL

Born in 2005 under the name Shimano-Memory Corp as the result of the merger of the Netherlands' Bankgiroloterij and Japan's Shimano, the Dutch team managed by Iwan Spekenbrink spent six years making progress with the return of the tool manufacturer Skil, which had already sponsored Sean Kelly's team in the 1980s (explaining the remake of a vintage jersey). However, in 2012, the support of the oil company Argos North Sea Group propelled the squad to a whole new level. It then flew the flag for the world's largest bicycle manufacturer, the aptly named Taiwanese company Giant, for several seasons.

In 2016, the structure took out a German licence and, after serving as the face of Alpecin shampoos and the tour operator Sunweb in cycling, it flew the colours of DSM, a Dutch group specialising in nutrition and pharma (with Firmenich and PostNL as co-title sponsors). It registered in the Netherlands again before morphing into Picnic PostNL, with the online supermarket and the Dutch postal service joining forces as co-title sponsors.

Its Tour de France debut in 2009 was an emotional affair, featuring the motivation of little-known French riders who had been forgotten by the big teams (including Cyril Lemoine, third in stage 3), the lion-hearted sprinter Kenny van Hummel's suffering in the mountains, and the flashes of brilliance of Japan's Fumiyuki Beppu, seventh in Aubenas and again on the attack on the Champs-Élysées, which earned him the combativity award for that stage.

Invited for the second time in 2012, Argos, still with the same Japanese co-sponsor, Shimano, pinned its hopes on the young sprinter Marcel Kittel, diminished by gastroenteritis from the start. He exacted revenge big time in 2013, taking four stage wins, including the opener in Bastia, with the Yellow Jersey as a bonus, as well as the final and most prestigious stage on the Champs-Élysées. The German toppled Mark Cavendish from the throne with another four stages in 2014, including the opener and the closer. In 2017, the big void left by the absence of Kittel from the Tour in 2015 before his departure in 2016, and a repeat of the same story by John Degenkolb, one of the victims of a terrible collective training accident in January 2016, was filled by the Australian power sprinter Michael Matthews (green jersey) and the French climber Warren Barguil (polka-dot jersey) with two stage wins apiece, even though the leader of the team, Tom Dumoulin, was on a break after winning the 100th Giro.

In 2019, the team had a harder time dealing with the absence of Dumoulin, second in the 2018 Giro and Tour as well as the world time trial championship, which he had won in the previous year, due to injury. Wilco Kelderman, who was leading the squad in Dumoulin's place, was forced to withdraw due to back issues lingering from a fall in March. Michael Matthews posted Team Sunweb's best result in that year's Tour as the runner-up to Julian Alaphilippe in Épernay. The squad has proved time and again its ability to recover from the loss of its leaders. In 2020, its platoon of all-rounders snapped up no fewer than three stage wins, along with the prize for the most combative rider, awarded to the big surprise of the Tour de France, Marc Hirschi… who also jumped ship soon afterwards.

2021 turned out to be a lean season after it opted not to field its leader, Romain Bardet, but he returned to the Tour de France in 2022 (sixth). He gave it another shot in 2023, but a crash knocked him out of the race when he was sitting twelfth overall before the Alps and the Dutch team had no plan B. The final appearance of the rider from Auvergne in the Grande Boucle was the perfect epilogue: in 2024, he claimed the opening stage to Rimini in a one-two with his young teammate Frank van den Broek and, with it, a Yellow Jersey that will forever hold pride of place in his wardrobe!

Picnic PostNL has always got an ace up its sleeve. Its trump card in the 2025 Tour de France was Oscar Onley. The Scotsman was up there in all the key stages (with eight top 10 finishes, including third place in Mûr-de-Bretagne) and defied the odds to take fourth place overall. He has since been sold to Ineos Grenadiers for a tidy sum. In the hunt for stage wins, Van den Broek had to settle for second for the second year in a row, this time in Pontarlier on the eve of the finish, while the 22-year-old rookie Tobias Lund Andresen showed his sprinting prowess with third place in Valence.