Wilco Kelderman became 15th in Paris-Nice 2015. The young overall rider from Team LottoNL-Jumbo went through a big disappointment, this week in France. The fact that the individual time trial on the Col d’Èze turned out into another setback was typical for his week. But several riders developed their selves on the other hand.   

“This is a strange end of Paris-Nice”, sports director Jan Boven said after the race to the LottoNL-Jumbo website. He was disappointed about last week’s results.

“We were looking forward to this race for a while. In the end, we saw what we already found out last Thursday. Wilco Kelderman just wasn’t good enough. Steven Kruijswijk did a good job today on the uphill time trial, but Wilco wasn’t able to hang on to that pace. That is a bad sign.We have to take our time to find the reason for this. It isn’t smart to take your conclusions to early. Wilco is fed up about this the most, himself. He did everything he could to be in shape at the right time. He was in training camp for three weeks and prepared himself perfectly. That his effort didn’t pay of is very unfortunate.”   

On the other hand, Steven Kruijswijk really grew in the race, this year. He was in the leading group for a long time in Saturday and continued his good performance in today’s uphill time trial. “My legs are feeling really painful, at the moment”, Kruijswijk said after his time trial. “Those two days in bad weather were not a cup of thee. But I’m satisfied with my last days here in France. I grew into this race. That’s the positive side of these days.”   

“It was good to see that the team recovered, anyway”, Jan Boven appointed. “We kept fighting. There were also some positive points, seen from an individual point of view. Steven, Jos van Emden, Bram Tankink and Moreno Hofland made some important progression. You always learn from races like this in the end. This is going to make us stronger.”