Vader has excelled in mountain biking until now. He is wary of having high expectations in his first period as a road cyclist. “I’ll try to go into the races without expectations as I did during the past training camps. I will keep my eyes and ears open. If something doesn’t work out, there is still time to learn. If you work hard enough, you will get there. Of course I know how to ride a bike, but there’s a lot more to it than that.”

The man from the Dutch Province of Zeeland has already experienced his teammates being there for him whenever he has questions. “The atmosphere is excellent. I come from a team with six riders, so there is quite a lot of personal contact. This team is much bigger, yet everyone is in touch with each other a lot. It’s super fun and the atmosphere is more familiar than I had expected. The training camps I have already been to were excellent experiences”, Vader says about his first months with the team. “And the team’s professionalism goes one step further than I was used to.”

He sees it as an exciting challenge to alternate between the mountain bike and the road bike. “They are different sports. On the road, you need a different physical condition. That’s why we chose to divide my season into blocks. I bring my steering skills from mountain biking to the road and my explosiveness can also be an asset.”

Team Jumbo-Visma has a reputation to uphold in Valencia. In recent years the team was successful with sprint victories of Danny Van Poppel and Dylan Groenewegen. This year the eyes are on David Dekker in the sprint. Will he ensure the team’s first success of the season after Rohan Dennis’s victory in the Australian time trial championship?