Belkin Pro Cycling Team
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| Team information | |
|---|---|
| Registered | Netherlands |
| Founded | 1984 |
| Discipline | Road |
| Status | UCI WorldTeam |
| Bicycles |
Colnago (1984–2008) Giant (2009–2013) Bianchi (2014–) |
| Components | Shimano |
| Website | Team home page |
| Key personnel | |
| General manager | Richard Plugge |
| Team name history | |
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Team LottoNL–Jumbo is a men's professional bicycle racing team, successor of the former Rabobank. The team consists of three sections: ProTeam (the UCI ProTour team), Continental (a talent team racing in the UCI Europe Tour), and Cyclo-cross.
The cycling team was founded for the 1984 season under the name Kwantum–Decosol, anchored by Jan Raas, with mostly cyclists coming from the TI–Raleighcycling team. With Raas as directeur sportif from 1985 onwards, the head sponsor was succeeded by Superconfex, Buckler, Wordperfect and Novell, respectively, before Raas signed a contract with Rabobank, a Dutch association of credit unions, in 1996. After Rabobank sponsorship ended in 2012, it was known as Blanco, Belkin, and then Lotto-Jumbo.
Since 1984, the team has entered every Tour de France and since the introduction of divisions in 1998, the team has always been in the first division. A 2012 investigation by Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant concluded that doping was at least tolerated, from the team's 1996 beginnings as Rabobank until at least 2007.
In road bicycle racing, teams take name from their main sponsors. Team LottoNL–Jumbo has previously had the following sponsors, and thus names.
After the season of 1983, the TI–Raleighteam split up because of tension between former world champion Jan Raas and team leader Peter Post, with seven cyclists following Post to the new Panasonic-team and six cyclists joining Raas to the Kwantum team. The team captains of the Kwantum team were Guillaume Driessens, Jan Gisbers and Walter Godefroot. In their first year, the team managed to win the intermediate sprints classification and one stage in the 1984 Tour de France, the Amstel Gold Race and the Dutch national road championship. After the 1984 season, Jan Raas stopped as an active cyclist and became team manager. In 1985 the Kwantum team had a successful year. Victories included two Tour de France stages, the Tour of Luxembourg, Paris–Tours, Paris–Brussels, the Tirreno–Adriatico, the Tour of Belgium, again the Dutch national road championship, and the World cycling championship (Joop Zoetemelk). 1986 was less successful; the most important victory was Tour of Belgium.
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