Last year, the CEO of Flanders Classics, Tomas Van Den Spiegel, made a bet with Unibet Rose Rockets: if their sprinter Lukáš Kubiš finished in the top 10 at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, he would give the team a wild card for the Tour of Flanders.
The Rockets owners had been asking for an invite for years. They knew it was far away – the group was only created in 2023 as the result of a YouTube channel of three friends – but they joked about it every time they saw the organizer of the event. The Omloop was only their third WorldTour race. Van Den Spiegel probably felt safe that his work would never be finished; so safe that he closed his gift with a deep laugh. But when Kubiš went out and finished sixth, in his WorldTour debut, Van Den Spiegel suddenly had to take things more seriously.
A year on, and the promise is still kept. This Sunday, the Rockets will make their first trip to the Tour of Flanders, thanks to Kubiš’s result, but mainly because of their hurricane. The day will bring a new event for the group; since stepping up to ProTeam status in 2024, the Rockets have marked their first WorldTour event at the Amstel Gold Race, their first Monument at last year’s Paris-Roubaix, and next month will make their Grand Tour debut as a wildcard at the Giro d’Italia.
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For Bas Tietema, the owner of the rockets, Sunday’s race did not come soon enough. “I’m very happy, it’s been years,” he said Weekly Cycling. It’s like a national holiday here in Flanders.
Back in 2020, just a year into his ‘Tour de Tietema’ YouTube business, Tietema and his channel editors Josse Wester and Devin van der Wiel made a seven-part video series of themselves preparing to ride the 240km course in Flanders. Their goal was to finish – which they did – and the final video already has almost 600,000 views. Today, all three of them are the owners of a multi-million euro investment group that will be on the legal line to start.
Tietema says: “Progress has been very strong. Last month, Rockets won four races in 10 days, including the first WorldTour skin at Ronde van Brugge thanks to new signing Dylan Groenewegen.
Groenewegen celebrates a milestone by taking a selfie.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
However, even though his riders are now competing with, and in some cases beating, WorldTour teams, Tietema still sees his team as strong underdogs.
“I don’t think it’s fair to compare us to teams above our level in terms of budget, but then again. [in terms of] the depth of their team, “but I think that, with a limited fund, and a lot of desire and a smart choice, you can be very competitive in other areas.”
So what should we expect from the Rockets on their Tour of Flanders? None of the team’s seven riders have any racing experience. “We don’t have Remco [Evenepoel] or Wout [van Aert] or Tadej Pogačar or Mathieu [van der Poel]so we have to do it in a smart way,” says Tietema.
“We started the team race offensively, aggressively – that suits us – but that sometimes doesn’t work well. For example, Niklas [Larsen] yesterday he rode an amazing race [at Dwars door Vlaanderen]but it may not be visible in the result.
“In terms of the result, the top 10 will be crazy. So we need to see the opportunity during the race to find the right time to enter the race there… For people to see us riding towards the finish, the same way as the first race we started, I think that will be very exciting.”
‘From the Champions League to the Ronde van Vlaanderen in SIX years’ read the title of a Rockets YouTube video released earlier this week. It’s an amazing story, which sometimes they find it hard to believe, but next Sunday, the dream will come true. We all appreciate the passion, the faith, and the top 10 bed.
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