Team president Karel Van Eetvelt said in a statement at the time, “The departure of Dstny is not a cause for concern. Various discussions are taking place to secure the future of our team and hard work is being done. The National Lottery remains our main partner, having supported us previously during challenging times. We are determined to continue building on the solid foundations that we have today.”
“The relationship with the Lottery was already not going well right from the start,” Dstny CEO Daan De Wever told De Tidj. “We quickly realized that we were in a construct where the Lottery did not want to share power. In every decision – both sporting and policy – they wanted to have the last word. The culture, the style and the collaboration were not what we had in mind.”
Nevertheless, Van Eetvelt was optimistic, saying that a “long-term international agreement” had been signed with Spanish bicycle manufacture Orbea and that “our other partners believe in the strength of the team and ensure that our foundations remain strong.”
The question then must be asked why so many riders have left the team and have so far been replaced primarily by youngsters from Lotto’s development team. No fewer than nine riders have left, including Florian Vermeersch (to UAE Team Emirates), Andreas Kron (Uno-X Mobility), Victor Campenaerts (Visma–Lease a Bike) and Pascal Eenkhoorn (Soudal–Quick Step).
Of the seven new riders added to the professional team, five come from its development team, including the promising 22-year-old all-rounder Robin Orens and the 19-year-old sprinter Steffen De Schuyteneer. The two professional riders added are Reuben Thompson (from Groupama-FDJ) and Lars Craps (from Pro team Flanders–Baloise). Both are young and have a meager Palmares so far – though Thompson finished second in a stage of this year’s Tour of the Basque Country when he was part of a six-man breakaway that was allowed to finish the race, with the rest of the peloton neutralized after a mass crash.
One can imagine that a potential financial crunch due to Dstny’s departure influenced the team’s transfer strategy. But the truth is that Lotto will next year still have all of the riders responsible for their excellent 2024, in which the team registered 25 wins and ended the year in ninth place in the UCI World Team Rankings. Lotto is so far ahead of the relegation zone that only a total collapse would endanger its promotion.
And that seems unlikely with the likes of Lennart Van Eetvelt had a spectacular year, winning the UAE Tour and the Gree-Tour of Guangxi and finishing second on a stage of the Vuelta a España. No wonder that he is so full of confidence heading into 2025 that sees himself even challenging Tadej Pogačar, but only when the Slovenian is past his prime.
“I have the advantage of being three years younger than Pogačar and I hope he doesn’t keep racing until he’s 35,” he told the Dutch publication Wielerrevue. “He is extremely strong. He may still make progress for one or two years, but after that it will also become a bit less easy for him. So I do have hope that I can reach a similar level in the future.”
Good luck with that. But you have to admire his confidence. Another young Lotto rider brimming with self-belief is the prolific 22-year-old Belgian road race champion Arnau de Lie, who also won the PostNord Tour of Denmark and the one-day Binche-Chimay-Binche, in which he outsprinted Biniam Girmay and Jasper Philipsen.
Lotto will also expect progress from the very promising 21-year-old Alec Segaert, who this year won the European Under-23 ITT Championship, finished third in the Under-23 World Championship and came second in the Belgian National ITT Championship.
Lotto is clearly a team building for the future, which goes a long way in explaining why it is leaning so heavily on its Development Team next year and for many years to come.
