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1975996

Visma–Lease a Bike (men's team)

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1975996

Visma–Lease a Bike (men's team)

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Visma–Lease a Bike (men's team)

Visma–Lease a Bike is a Dutch professional bicycle racing team, successor of the former Rabobank. The team consists of four sections: ProTeam (the UCI WorldTeam team), Women's Team (the UCI Women's Team), Development Team (a UCI Continental team racing in the UCI Europe Tour), and cyclo-cross.

The cycling team was founded for the 1984 season under the name Kwantum–Decosol, anchored by Jan Raas, with mostly cyclists coming from the TI–Raleigh cycling team. With Raas as directeur sportif from 1985 onwards, the head sponsor was succeeded by Superconfex, Buckler, WordPerfect and Novell, respectively, before Raas signed a contract with Rabobank, a Dutch association of credit unions, in 1996. After Rabobank sponsorship ended in 2012, it was known as Blanco, Belkin, Lotto–Jumbo, Jumbo–Visma and now Visma–Lease a Bike.

Since 1984, the team has entered every Tour de France and since the introduction of divisions in 1998, the team has always been in the first division. A 2012 investigation by Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant concluded that doping was at least tolerated, from the team's 1996 beginnings as Rabobank until at least 2007.

Team Jumbo–Visma cyclist Jonas Vingegaard won the 2022 Tour de France, delivering the team its first Tour de France victory in the General Classification, as well as the King of the Mountains title while his team-mate Wout van Aert won the Points Classification title. In 2023, Vingegaard repeated his feat and Jumbo–Visma won the team classification for the first time. That year, fellow Jumbo–Visma riders Primož Roglič and Sepp Kuss also won the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España respectively, making the team the first to win all three Grand Tours in a single calendar year.

In road bicycle racing, teams usually take their names from their main sponsors. The team has had the following sponsors, and thus names.

After the season of 1983, the TI–Raleigh team split up because of tension between former world champion Jan Raas and team leader Peter Post, with seven cyclists following Post to the new Panasonic-team and six cyclists joining Raas to the Kwantum team. The team captains of the Kwantum team were Guillaume Driessens, Jan Gisbers and Walter Godefroot. In their first year, the team managed to win the intermediate sprints classification and one stage in the 1984 Tour de France, the Amstel Gold Race and the Dutch national road championship.

After the 1984 season, Jan Raas stopped as an active cyclist and became team manager. In 1985 the Kwantum team had a successful year. Victories included two Tour de France stages, the Tour of Luxembourg, Paris–Tours, Paris–Brussels, the Tirreno–Adriatico, the Tour of Belgium, again the Dutch national road championship, and the World cycling championship (Joop Zoetemelk). 1986 was less successful; the most important victory was Tour of Belgium.

For the 1987 season, the main sponsor became Superconfex. In that year, the team was officially known as Superconfex – Kwantum – Yoko – Colnago. Jan Raas remained the team leader. After a victory in Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne for Ludo Peeters, the new sprinter Jean-Paul van Poppel, coming from the Skala cycling team, gave the team a great year, with five stage wins in the Tour de France (of which two for van Poppel) and the victory in the points classification in the Tour de France for Jean-Paul van Poppel. Joop Zoetemelk ended his career with a victory in the Amstel Gold Race.

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