Benoot wants nothing to do with "meaningless" Visma| LaB-statistic: "That makes my hairs stand on end"

Olav Kooij finished fourteenth in Milan-San Remo, Tiesj Benoot fifteenth in the Tour of Flanders, Tim van Dijke sixteenth in Paris-Roubaix, Benoot twelfth in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and Wilco Kelderman twenty-first in the Tour of Lombardy. As a result, the counter for top-10 finishes for Visma | Lease a Bike in the 2024 monuments remained at zero, making it the only WorldTour team that failed to achieve a top-10 placement this year. However, Benoot didn’t put much stock in that statistic.

2024 was a challenging year for Visma | Lease a Bike, especially after crashes involving Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard in the spring. This led to a painful realization after the Tour of Lombardy, although Benoot sees it differently. "That’s a statistic that makes my hairs stand on end," he said on the Kop over Kop podcast. "It’s fun for journalists, but it’s meaningless. Every WorldTour team, except UAE, would immediately sign up for a season like ours," the 30-year-old Belgian responded.

Benoot then gave some explanations for this statistic. "First of all, we’re not riding for top ten finishes. We’re riding to win. And you can turn it around too: in the Tour of Flanders, I was in the group competing for second place after the Paterberg, but then I got a flat. In Liège, I was fifth over the Roche-aux-Faucons, but then a large group caught up."

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"We should be proud of the fight we’ve put up," said Benoot

Bad luck continually followed the Dutch team, as Benoot himself noted. "In the other Monuments, we faced similar situations." For him, the insignificant statistic belongs in the trash. "You can look at it that way, but you can also consider the fact that we’re still ranked second on the WorldTour. That’s something to be proud of, too." Visma | Lease a Bike is nearly 17,000 points behind leader UAE Team Emirates in that ranking.

The Gent-born rider emphasized this perspective shift. "I think we should see it as: despite the bad luck, we still achieved these results. It’s frustrating, but on the other hand, we should be proud of the fight we put up. That goes for the Tour de France, too; we made it a two-week battle in the Tour," Benoot remarked, referring to the brave fight Visma | Lease a Bike waged in France. Nevertheless, their leader Jonas Vingegaard ultimately finished over six minutes behind, placing second to the invincible Tadej Pogacar.

A year like 2024 is anything but normal for the Dutch team. It was a season plagued by setbacks, unlike other seasons, as Benoot observed. "That’s something we’re going to evaluate. We’ll look at the crashes and the injuries, but that’s a tough issue. Risks are always part of cycling," the Belgian concluded on a realistic note.