Bauke Mollema sees the benefits of the idea of organizers ASO, RCS and Flanders Classics to reduce the number of riders per team in their races. "Both for safety in the grand tours and the classics. It will also be more difficult to control the races," Mollema tells RTV Noord.

The three race organizers have decided to reduce the number of riders per team in their races in 2017. The measure means teams will be made up of eight instead of nine riders in the Giro d'Italia (RCS Sport), Tour de France and Vuelta a España (Unipublic/ASO). The number of teams will remain unchanged and so the peloton will be significantly smaller.

In the smaller stage races and one-day races of the three organizers – which include all the monuments  - the team size will be reduced from 8 to 7.

Tom-Jelte Slagter also welcomes the idea of ​​the organizers.

"First of all, the bunch is going to be smaller, provided that the number of teams is unchanged," Slagter told RTV Noord. "In my view, this is a step forward. There will be less control with one rider less and so the race will maybe be more open. "