When it comes to sprinters, there are a few men who dominate the current conversation. Jasper Philipsen, of course, winner of nine Tour de France stages since 2022; Biniam Girmay, the Tour’s last green jersey winner after stealing the show with three victories; and both Jonathan Milan and Tim Merlier, winners of three stages each at the 2024 Giro d’Italia.
Muscling his way into the conversation, with the air of a man quietly sitting at an invitation-only table but with his elbows out to subtly announce his presence, is Olav Kooij. Just turned 23, the Visma-Lease a Bike rider has won 33 professional races in his three full seasons as a WorldTour pro, and nine of his past 10 victories have been in the highest-tier of races, including a win at May’s Giro d’Italia. He’s not winning Tour stages yet – and may have to wait a long time given the Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert combination at Visma – but he’s there, emerging from the background into the foreground, ready to take the title as the sport’s fastest man.
“I think I can be, yeah,” the Dutchman says confidently when asked by Rouleur if he’s on the cusp of being the sport’s best current sprinter. “I think I can win and I’ve won a few times at WorldTour level this year. On a good day, I can beat maybe everyone. If you look at the wins, Philipsen, Merlier and Milan were on the top step more this year, but I was close behind them. We go into every race trying to win, we believe we can win, and I’ve beaten them. To make that next step, to maybe be the best one, is what we are aiming for.”
Kooij, tall, and with a slightly slender frame than some of his rivals, has taken most of his wins against mid-ranked sprinters, but has an admirable and promising record against the aforementioned four: in direct sprint duals against Merlier in 2024, Kooij came out on top eight times, with Merlier winning 10; against Milan, the Italian just edged the battle 5-3; Kooij bettered Girmay 2-1; and it was only Philipsen, with a margin of 7-3 in his favour, who consistently bettered Kooij.
Beating his main competition on a more regular basis is what is driving Kooij this winter, now fully recovered from minor knee surgery relating to a crash at August's Renewi Tour. “Part of getting better is experience, doing those finals every year, making the right decisions in the sprint,” Kooij says. “Improving physically as well, getting a bit stronger and finding a bit more speed. I also try to improve with gym work and more explosive training.”
Portrait by Véronique Rolland
As he experienced in the first week of the Giro, his first Grand Tour he had to abandon with fever at the midway point, to contest a sprint, sometimes you have to get over several thousands of metres of elevation. “Road cycling isn’t done in the gym [in the winter], so you have to improve throughout the year so that you get stronger on the endurance side of things and are able to do longer efforts.”
One less conventional way in which Kooij sharpens his fitness is on the ice rink. In his junior years, Kooij combined cycling with speed skating and still gets his skates on a few times a winter. “I think it helped me a lot,” he says. “The explosive stuff I did in skating does help my sprinting, and I think especially when I was younger it helped with shorter efforts. Nowadays, I don’t see it as training, just more fun with friends, focusing on technique rather than getting efforts done. It’s a nice way of staying fit.”
It will only be in December when teams convene for their first training camp of the forthcoming season, that Kooij will learn of his race schedule for 2025. It’s sure to include another Grand Tour, but it’s unlikely to be the Tour. Kaden Groves of Alpecin-Deceuninck has experienced the same problem in recent years, with Philipsen ahead of him in the pecking order, so could Kooij follow the Australian’s program in competing at both the Giro and the Vuelta a España? “To be honest, I don’t really look at it like that – I just try to get a nice program, find my goals in that, and not compare it to other sprinters,” he says. “I think [Visma] is one of the biggest teams, one of the best teams, there is obviously great support here, and I’ve made some nice steps in the last year. I have to keep it going, keep getting bigger wins each year, and try to focus on the chances I have and do the best I can.”
*Cover image by SWpix.com
