A long time ago (1984), in what feels like a galaxy far away (the 80s generally), a guy who represented the Kwantum department store was riding his bike in Amsterdam when suddenly another rider who worked for the Decosol window covering company came out of nowhere and crashed into the first guy. The first guy exclaimed “you got your handlebars in my wheel!” and the second guy yelled “you hit my frame with your cranks!” and then they realized that, together, they had all the parts necessary to start the Kwantum-Decosol Cycling Team.
Or maybe the first guy was Jan Raas on his way from a meeting where once and for all he told Peter Post what so many people in professional cycling had longed to tell Peter Post, which was, to put it in polite terms, that he was never going to work with him again. And the second guy was an agent with solid connections to half of the Ti-Raleigh roster, and together, once they got up off the ground, they realized that they actually did have enough of what they needed to start a professional cycling team. Anyway, that’s the origin story of Kwantum-Decosol, which became… a bunch of things, then Rabobank, then some more shit and finally the Jumbo-Visma juggernaut that just took control of the 2022 Tour de France.
And yet, for all of their history, which includes taking big swings at the Tour de France more often than not, this team has never won the Tour and until recently had never really come all that close. In nearly 40 years, they haven’t won a race that typically has about 20 teams. Even the simplest odds would say they should have a couple maillot jaunes hanging on the wall by now. And those odds would be wrong.
For Jumbo and its antecedents, that’s not just a run of bad luck. It’s a Cleveland Browns-level run of fan torture that stands above and beyond what anyone else can possibly complain about. This is the second-oldest team in the peloton, and until Steven Kruijswijk came along they had one lousy podium place — third, inherited by Denis Menchov in 2008 when Bernie Köhl got popped for doping and Menchov didn’t (until later). Primož Roglič has now been second and fourth, and Vingegaard added his second place last year, and things are starting to look respectable. But only…
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