After a good preparation led by Jan Boven and Mathieu Heijboer, the Belkin Pro Cycling Team is full of confidence and ambition for the World Championships team time trial next Sunday. Stef Clement and his five teammates want to perform to the maximum of their abilities.

“We are not among the favourites, but we certainly have the potential to reach the top ten,” said Clement. We need to focus on ourselves because we have no influence on what other teams do. We’ve had a good preparation and we know what we’re capable able of. We’re really looking forward to this team time trial and we want to make the best of it. The higher up we finish in the top ten, the better. Hopefully, we can ride above and beyond our expectations.”

Jan Boven has confidence in the team, which includes five home riders and Dutch-speaking Robert Wagner from Germany. “We have strong riders, who are well-suited for the course. It’s almost entirely flat with a small ‘Limburg-climb’ in the beginning,” Boven explained. “Lars Boom and Maarten Tjallingii were also in the running to make the team, but Lars’ girlfriend is due to give birth during the World Championships and Maarten is still ill after his victory in the World Ports Classic.”

Trainer Mathieu Heijboer assisted the team in recent weeks to be ready. The strides the riders made please him. “We’ve had a good preparation. We mainly focused on the correct order and automatism,” Heijboer said. “We made videos and reviewed them. We checked previous team time trials, as well. That way we’ve even improved some small details. We did a race simulation, including the pre-race warm-up on the rollers that came very close to simulating the Florence time trial. The boys went full throttle, allowing us to spot mistakes and to correct them.”

Belkin line-up for World team time trial Championships:

Stef Clement, Jos van Emden, Rick Flens, Wilco Kelderman, Tom Leezer and Robert Wagner