Dylan van Baarle, the Paris-Roubaix winner who has left Visma-Lease a Bike for Soudal QuickStep, has said both he and Simon Yates had issues with the training methods at the Dutch team.
His comments come just 24 hours after reigning Giro d'Italia champion Yates announced his immediate retirement from the sport. He has cut short his two-year contract with Visma-Lease a Bike, opting out after completing one year of that deal.
Yates rode all of his career with the Australian World Tour team currently known as Jayco AlUla until the end of the 2014 season, when he decided he wanted a change and left for a two-year deal with Visma-Lease a Bike.
His sudden departure yesterday has left the team with a significant gap in its roster to plug. Van Baarle said he and Yates had issues with the Visma training methods. And, though Yates obviously still won the Giro last year, van Baarle has linked the training issues with his own departure from the team and with the decision of Yates to retire.
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“If you feel like it’s not the place where you can excel or be 100 per cent yourself, then you need to choose,” van Baarle told Daniel Benson, the well-known cycling journalist who runs his own Substack, which is well worth following.
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“It’s a lot of things,” van Baarle said of his reasons for wanting to leave and deciding to look for a new team early last year. “But in the end I would have liked to have done my own approach to racing that I was used to and to be 100 per cent ready for the races. And also, I never really felt that I could be in 100 per cent shape for the big races."
He added, however, the team's training was working for a lot of riders in Visma-Lease a Bike but not for those who "don’t fit in that mould", including himself "and Simon was also a bit like that".
"He (Yates) may have wanted to do a bit more of his own thing," van Baarle added. "For me, I didn’t have the feeling it was working, and if you have that feeling, then for him it results in retirement, and for me it resulted in a good opportunity here (at Soudal QuickStep). If you can’t feel comfortable with what you’re doing, then it’s not going to work."
Van Baarle explained that for him and, he says, Yates, and maybe others, it was hard to follow the team's training regime and get 100 per cent out of themselves.
"I just feel like I was doing the intensities in not the right way. Too high basically and too short, and I’m more of a grinding type... it’s not for everyone."
Van Baarle discusses a range of issues with Benson on his Substack. This includes his time inside Visma-Lease a Bike, for three seasons, why he decided early last year he wanted to move - even before he had any offers - and how riders go about joining a new team.
