There were plenty of reasons for Team Picnic PostNL to stop believing. Before this year’s Giro d’Italia, they had just two victories in 2025, both below the WorldTour level. The first came at the Surf Coast Classic back in January, the second at Nokere Koerse in Belgium a few months later. The cobbled Classics rolled by, then the Ardennes, then the smaller week-long stage races, and still the results did not come. In the battle to avoid relegation at the end of this season, Team Picnic PostNL were losing, teetering on the dangerous edge of having their WorldTour licence revoked at the end of 2025. Morale, on paper, should have been lower than ever.
The Dutch squad came to this Giro with a team primed for hunting stage wins – and the UCI points that come with them. Romain Bardet is on a quest to complete the trio of victories in every Grand Tour before he retires at the end of this season, while the likes of Bram Welten and Alex Edmondson came as part of a lead-out train for the team’s young sprinter, Casper van Uden. The opening stages in Albania were the first chances for the 23-year-old fast man to show what he could do, but his results in the two bunch finishes were as follows: 149th and 158th.
As the race moved from the Balkans to Italy after the first rest day, there was absolutely no reason why Van Uden should have imagined he could win a sprint stage. Lidl-Trek have a flying Mads Pedersen in their ranks with extra confidence as he wears the pink jersey, while Visma-Lease a Bike’s Olav Kooij has a Giro stage win to his name already from last season. The likes of Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Sam Bennett (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team) and Paul Magnier (Soudal-Quick Step) would all have ranked above the Picnic PostNL rider in the list of favourites for a victory on the fast and technical roads of Lecce in stage four. For Van Uden and his teammates, however, all that mattered was holding on to the belief in themselves.
“I don’t think it’s a surprise for me to win,” the Dutch rider smiled after the race. “I know the boys and everyone kept believing in me – sometimes I just have to find that belief in myself a little bit. Everyone from the team does a good job helping me do that, and it paid off.”
Van Uden’s stage win – the biggest victory of his career – comes off the back of a testing period in which his team have exhibited commendable fighting spirit and self-assuredness. Each rider sacrificed their own chances for the top step of the podium in stage four, giving everything for success, despite the fact it may have been easy to start doubting their leader. Not only is Van Uden’s win imperative for team spirit as the Giro d’Italia rolls on, it is also crucial in the battle to stay above relegation: 180 UCI points were awarded to the team after stage four’s result.
When it comes to collecting those points, there are clearly two schools of thought from the teams fighting for that final WorldTour licence. Team Picnic PostNL have taken a different approach to their rivals, XDS Astana, whose sports director; Dmitriy Fofonov, told Rouleur a few weeks ago: “If you race for victory, you take the responsibility to take a risk, but sometimes we prefer to be seventh or eighth."
Picnic, on the other hand, appears to be sticking to their guns of shooting for victories. If relegation was their prime concern, getting as many riders as possible in the top-10 of Giro stages might be the play, but they are bike racers who want to win – the battle for relegation isn't going to change that approach. Van Uden’s stage victory at the Giro is the first time this season that this mindset has started to pay off: big victories are possible if the team keeps believing in them. Picnic-PostNL might have been down for some time, but they are certainly not out.
“We don’t know the future and I’m happy to live in the now,” Van Uden grinned after the race. “For now, it’s really good.”
