Jose Herrada and Remco Te Brake have not renewed their contracts with the team for the new season. Bellow you can find information about the riders currently under contract with eBuddy, including their wage and their transfer availability for the upcoming transfer season.
Even the greatest love stories have an end and it looks like this the end of ours, Robert. It has been seven seasons full of ups and downs (quite literally), but in the end you always were there when the team needed you most and had been a wonderful flag carrier for us throughout the years. As a thank you, we’d like to have a look at some of the most iconic moments of the years we spent together.
It all started in 2011. We were a young team, only in our second year of existence but already amongst the elite of World cycling. We were looking for a leader and you were looking for a new challenge and it just clicked. It was fate. We needed each other more than we needed anything else and I think that was reflected by our commitment to each other in the many tough moments that paved our way to glory.
The first season was perhaps the most complicated. New team, new team-mates, it’s never easy to adjust and be able to perform at your highest level. Even though Ruben Plaza proved to be the more consistent rider and managed to finish as our highest scoring rider (the only season when you didn’t achieve this), you were still the one that brought home the most impressive results, the type of results that catch the eye. We talk of course about your fantastic Tour de Romandie win, your second place in Fleche Wallone or the fantastic effort you put in to bring our first success in the Eindhoven TTT.
Best results of 2011:
1st, Tour de Romandie
1st, Eindhoven TTT
Stage wins: Tour de Romandie (2)
3rd, Crierium International,
6th, Liege – Bastogne – Liege
8th, Amstel Gold Race
10th, Tour de France
Gesink winning the 5th stage of the Tour de Romanie 2011
2012 was the kind of season that would be a standard for your next years, plenty of potential to deliver the big results but also enough of bad lack that stroke in the most important moments to see those results slipping away from between your fingers. This was also the start of a few years where we all decided that it was best if you’d stay away from Grand Tours for a while. You didn’t manage to defend your title in Romandie, but found a new crown in Vuelta al Pais Vasco and once again an instrumental wagon in our train to the race that replace the Eindhoven TTT, the Copenhagen - Malmo TTT.
Best results of 2012:
1st, Vuelta al Pais Vasco
1st, Copenhagen – Malmo TTT
Stage wins: Vuelta al Pais Vasco (2), Tour of Oman (2), Paris – Nice (1)
2nd, Paris – Nice
3rd, Classique de Grand Duche
4th, Vuelta a Murcia
5th, GP Mendrisio
7th, GP Liechtenstein
7th, Seine - Marne - Seine
9th, Fleche Wallone
Gesink winning the queen stage of the Vuelta al Pais Vasco 2012
2013 was perhaps the best season we enjoyed together. That is, of course, if we exclude the last 2 seasons, where you managed to place yourself amongst the best 10 riders in the World. But more on that later. Not only that you managed to defend the Vuelta al Pais Vasco title, but you also managed to do something you have never done in your career and would unfortunately never do again. Win two stage races in the same season. We are talking about, of course, your Deutschland Tour win. You were also once again in our team that won the Copenhagen – Malmo TTT which would be the last win we’d get in that race.
Best results of 2013:
1st, Vuelta al Pais Vasco
1st, Deutschland Tour
1st, Copenhagen – Malmo TTT
Stage wins: Vuelta al Pais Vasco (2), Tour de Romandie (1)
5th, Liege – Bastogne – Liege
5th, Criterium du Dauphine
5th, Tour of Tasmania
6th, Giro di Lombardia
10th, Fleche Wallone
10th, Amstel Gold Race
Robert Gesink celebrating his second Vuelta al Pais Vasco success
After a fantastic 2013 season, the 2014 one felt more like an off season where you struggled for the big results you used to achieve in the past, but we always believed that you had it in you to come back and by the end of the season we saw some of the old Robert Gesink come back to life as you managed to win your first national title in the Dutch Road Race Championships.
Best results of 2014:
1st, Dutch Road Race Championships
Stage wins: Vuelta al Pais Vasco (1), Criterium du Dauphine (1)
2nd, Tour of California
6th, Vuelta al Pais Vasco
6th, Criterium du Dauphine
6th, Volta a Catalunya
8th, Deutschland Tour
10th, Tour of Tasmania
Robert Gesink winning the closing ITT of the Vuelta al Pais Vasco for the third year in a row
With a brand new jersey, we once again had high hopes for the 2015 season. Things started slowly with the Basque Country Tour and the Tour of California and even the first mountain stage of the Vuelta a Espana as well. But then it happened, after all those frustrations you finally broke through and with a fantastic help from Ricardo van der Velde you managed to get your first GT stage win in the second mountain stage of the Vuelta. That win would be doubled in the final TT of the race, which would put into third overall. Vuelta a Espana 2015 was the race that restarted your career and your hunger for Grand Tours which would become essential in the next two years.
Best results of 2015:
Stage wins: Vuelta a Espana (2)
3rd, Vuelta a Espana
3rd, Criterium du Dauphine
5th, Vuelta al Pais Vasco
5th, Tour of California
Robert Gesink showing off his jersey at the Vuelta a Espana 2015
With the new found hunger for Grand Tours and with a Vuelta route tailor made for you, we knew we were in for a great season, we just didn’t know how great. The results in Paris - Nice and Vuelta al Pais Vasco weren’t very convincing, but with the Tour of California we got the glimpse of what was to come. And what came was the biggest victory of your career and the biggest victory in our team’s history: the general classification of the Vuelta a Espana 2016, while taking three stage wins and the points jersey on your way to Madrid where you had a lead of more than 6 minutes in front of the holder of all 3 Grand Tour crowns at that time: Aleksandr Pluchkin.
Best results of 2016:
1st, Vuelta a Espana
Stage wins: Vuelta a Espana (3), Vuelta al Pais Vasco (1)
Points Classification, Vuelta a Espana
2nd, Tour of California
7th, Paris – Nice
Robert Gesink celebrating his Vuelta a Espana 2016 overall win in Madrid
After having conquered the Spanish crown, we felt it was time to take on the biggest stage in cycling – the Tour de France. And even though you didn’t manage to replicate last year’s Vuelta, you had a fantastic race and managed to finish 3rd to make another dream come true for you and the team by being on the podium in Paris and also helping the team win for the first time the Team Classifications in the Tour, after previously doing it twice in La Vuelta and once Il Giro. You did not manage to win the Tour de France, but you still had your shares of victories, grabbing a crushing victory in Volta a Portugal and an unexpected victory in the World ITT Championships, which is a fantastic way to end our story.
Best results of 2017:
1st, World ITT Championships
1st, Volta a Portugal
Stage wins: Volta a Portugal (3)
3rd, Tour de France
4th, GP Liechtenstein
4th, Tour of Tasmania
Robert Gesink waiting to receive the rainbow jersey on the World Championships podium
And here we are. The 2018 season is laying ahead of us. The first season the team will spend in the Pro Tour without you as its leader. It wasn’t an easy choice, but we are glad our story ends on high note and I hope other moments of glory are waiting for us in the future even though we won’t be able to enjoy them together. It will be weird, it will be tough, but we hope we will pull through as I hope you will too with your new team and the new challenges that lay ahead of you.
