Merijn Zeeman, sport director of Visma-Lease A Bike, recognizes that they will lose even more races in 2024 when their longtime co-leader Primož Roglič moves to Bora-Hansgrohe in the off-season He is aware that he will lose even more races in 2024.

Roglič, who was with Jumbo Visma from 2016 to 2023, won 74 of his 80 career wins with the Dutch team. Last year alone, he took stage wins and podium finishes at the Giro d'Italia, Vuelta a España, Volta a Catalunya, and Tirreno Adriatico.

However, as Zeeman explained in an interview on the In Het Wiel podcast, "something changed for Primorsch" with the rise of teammate and two-time Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard.

On the same podcast, Zeman also said that while Jumbo Visma's first ever three Grand Tour victories in all should remain as a reference, the team's overwhelming success in 2023 sparked a decline in popularity in the peloton. Zeman also admitted that one of his major goals for 2024 is a monumental victory with Wout Van Art. 'I've talked to Primoz a lot over the last few years. When Jonas really broke through, something changed for Primoz."

"On the one hand, he really liked him and was very proud of the development of the team. But on the other hand, he gets a lot of motivation from winning himself.

"So we felt it was getting more and more difficult for Primosch. But I didn't want to just let him go.

As for the outcome of Roglic's move to Bora-Hansgrohe, Zeman recognized it could be a game changer. He said, "Jonas can beat anyone, but he also loses to Primosch a lot. Jonas can beat anyone, but he loses to Primosch a lot.

If there are no changes to the race program before the Tour de France, Roglic and Vingegaard are scheduled to clash this spring at the Criterium du Dauphiné with Ituria-Basque. They may also compete in the Vuelta a España, where they shared the podium with Sepp Kuss (Visma-Race A Bike) last September, but no decision has been made yet.

In the podcast, Zeman noted that in the 2023 season, Logrich won the Giro, Vingegaard won the Tour, and Sepp Kuss won the Vuelta a España. But he also stressed the importance of a culture of collective winning, rather than excessive focus on individuals, in order for teams to maintain hit rates.

"When people write about sports, it is logically about the athletes themselves, and sometimes about the trainers and coaches. But they never write about successful companies," he notes. For example, firing ten Eric Hugs won't change anything at Manchester United."

Zeman recognized that teams that are "underdogs" tend to attract more support than teams that are winning, explaining the team's decline in popularity in the peloton. But he was equally insistent about the team's continued determination to win every race in 2024, and he made the monument one major goal again this season.

"We haven't won in a while, but we keep pushing. Without top riders like Mathieu van der Pol and Taddei Pogachar, Wout would probably have won several times in Flanders."

"Those two [Pogachar and van der Pol] are very good and that makes it difficult to win the classics. This generation of cyclists is very talented.