There are no doubts that by signing the new three-year contract with Decathlon CMA CGM in January, Daan Hoole has opened a new chapter in his career. After four years (his first among the big names in cycling) spent at Lidl-Trek, the powerful Dutch rider has decided to change teams and defend the colors of Dominique Serieys' squad starting in 2026, where, as he himself has explained, he will play a different role compared to his recent past under Luca Guercilena.

"I will no longer have to be at the front of the group or position someone as quickly as possible, but initially I will be free to race my own race. Obviously, we have Tiesj Benoot and other strong riders, so if I don't reach my level or am not sufficiently competitive in the finale, I will naturally switch from being a free rider to helping my teammates," he explained to Cyclingflash.

"It's completely different from last year. The idea is to try to finish a bit further forward in race finales and, above all, to be a bit fresher. In races like GP Denain but also Paris-Roubaix, I will have my opportunity and the team will support me, and this is a big change for me because I will have to race in a totally different way. In recent years, I always had to worry about where my team leader was, if he was protected from the wind, if he was where he wanted to be, when I had to bring him forward, and so on. Now I will have to decide when to go to the front and how to do it with the least energy expenditure possible," Hoole continued, who already has a clear idea of the terrains where he could achieve the best results with this new approach.

"I think I can go far in Roubaix, a race where last year I sprinted to tenth place in the Velodrome. In races like Tour of Flanders, Gent-Wevelgem, and Dwars Door Vlaanderen, I will have to wait and see from time to time how it's most appropriate to move because I'm not very explosive. In those races, I might have more chances to make an impact by getting in a breakaway."

For Hoole, therefore, the Northern Classics campaign this year will be particularly stimulating and full of new challenges, and will provide him and experts with a clearer idea of how the two-time Dutch time trial champion can be performant in certain contexts when freed from domestique duties.

In this way, "Daantje" (three pro victories so far in his career) could see his chances of personal satisfaction increase and thus approach the goals he has set to conclusively archive 2026, which he has just begun, as a satisfactory year.

"My season will be a success if I can again fight for victory in time trials, if I feel stronger than a year ago, if I can be a protagonist in the Roubaix finale, and if, as a team, we manage to win many victories, especially at the Tour. If all this happens, then it will have been a positive year. I'll add that the European Championships and World Time Trial Championships in the autumn will be a very important goal for me, but in general, everything will revolve around winning as many races as possible," Hoole declared, who after the Giro and Vuelta will most likely complete the trilogy of Grand Tour participations by finally taking part in the race he never managed to ride in four seasons at Lidl-Trek: the Tour de France.

"Obviously, I'll have to prove that I'm in good form and therefore capable of doing my job (which puts me under a bit of pressure), but now I have more certainty of being part of the Tour compared to last year. When I signed here, I already knew that the possibility of taking part in the Grande Boucle was very concrete. This was also one of the main reasons why I changed teams. It's not that I was no longer happy at Lidl-Trek or didn't feel at home there, but here I have a bit more freedom and certainly more chances of participating in the Tour, which is the race everyone dreams of as a child," said the powerful Dutch rider with great tranquility, who, if he is indeed at the start, can be believed to not shy away from making himself known when the road gives him the opportunity.

It will be difficult for this to happen during the only individual time trial scheduled next July (the one in Thonon Les-Bains), a stage complicated for him by the almost ten kilometers of initial climb, where however he could try to obtain a good placement by leveraging the various training sessions he is facing with his new trainer.

"Now I'm working with a different trainer. With him, I've started training slightly differently because he has a truly scientific approach. My previous coach (Matthias Reck at Lidl-Trek, ed.) was actually a bit more practical: the principle was to train a lot and hard. Now I have more explanations about what I'm doing and more specific exercises, so we'll see how it goes," concluded the winner of the Pisa time trial at the last Giro d'Italia.