The baby of the squad turned 22 just nine days before the Grand Départ in Barcelona. A Belgian youth champion in running who only found the bike after an athletics injury, the Zottegem native served two seasons in Picnic PostNL's famed development program before stepping up in 2025 — now he gets thrown into the deep end of a Tour debut as workhorse for the sprint unit.
Palmarès
- 3rd on a stage of the Alpes Isère Tour (2024)
- 13th overall, Quatre Jours de Dunkerque (2026)
- Graduated from Picnic PostNL's development program to the WorldTour squad (2025)
- Tour de France debut (2026)
Cut-out factHe doesn't come from a cycling family at all — he was a title-winning junior runner, and it was watching cyclocross hero Sven Nys that first hooked him on bike racing.
The squad
Riding the 2026 Tour with Warren Barguil, Frits Biesterbos, Pavel Bittner, John Degenkolb, Niklas Märkl, Julius van den Berg, Frank van den Broek — see the full Picnic PostNL team page.
Portrait: AI paper-collage render (gpt-image-2) after a reference photograph — source: Wikimedia Commons, author: Nicola, license: CC BY-SA 4.0.
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