In its progressive and constant growth path, what the young Unibet Rose Rockets will reach on Friday, May 8th will be nothing short of a historic milestone: by lining up at the start of the first stage of the 2026 Giro d'Italia, the team led by Bas Tietema, Josse Wester and Devin van der Wiel will take the stage of the Grand Tours for the first time in its history, writing a memorable page of its, so far brief, existence.

The French-flagged (but Dutch-hearted) team will not come to the Corsa Rosa merely to participate but will present itself with the declared ambition of making an impact by hunting for stage victories, an objective that one of the most viral teams in the circus will try to achieve by betting almost everything on the rediscovered sprint form of Dylan Groenewegen.

The Dutch sprinter will be supported by a team designed almost entirely for him given the presence within it of all the key men of his train (built and refined in recent months thanks to the expert direction of former pro Marcel Kittel), but in the toughest stages he will leave the responsibility of keeping the Rockets' flag high to a super veteran like Wout Poels who, at his last (perhaps) dance of his career in a Grand Tour, will hunt for that success that still eludes him to enter the exclusive club of stage winners in all three Grand Tours. Alongside them, Unibet will be able to count on a battery of attackers and pacemakers of considerable quality (Lukas Kubis, Hartthijs De Vries and Tomas Kopecky above all) ready to animate and compete in the stages that will favor long-range breakaways.

The team, therefore, while clearly oriented towards group sprints, has the weapons to achieve satisfaction on days with different profiles and compete from the start in a Giro as protagonists, certifying in this way an ascent that has passed and is passing through increasingly evident changes, both at the roster level and internal organization. About this and the lineup that the team has chosen for the upcoming Giro d'Italia, we spoke at the Tour of Turkey with one of the team's sporting directors who will be engaged in Italy: Sverre Vik.

Sverre, what do you think of this selection?

It’s pretty clear that the team also stated that we are going for the sprints with Dylan and also Wout is there to race for a stage victory in the mountain. It's quite special because he has a stage win in both the Tour and the Vuelta. He's then coming back to the Giro taking this opportunity to try to go for his win there that he didn't expect to get in our team. We also have Lukas who can ride for some of the more hilly stages. We have to see what we can do but we definitely go for the stages and no target for the GC.

Neither any kind of other classifications?

It depends. I think that's something we need to see after the first week where looking where we actually are and where the other guys also are. If we make it in a breakaway you never know what can happen in the GC. We stay open and positive.

You have also really strong guys for breakaways…

We have both Niklas, Tomas, Hartthijs that you have seen in the Classics and can count on in the breakaways. Niklas has shown in the Classics that he has been strong: in Flanders, fordexample, he was the strongest one from our team. I think all the guys are making a new step now towards the Giro and we can expect the high level from everybody.

What's the aspect that the team has to be more careful about approaching the Giro d'Italia?

We come there with the sprint team. There are some really hard mountain stages that we need to watch out for and we're prepared for that. I think that's not the biggest challenge but is a challenge there and we need to come through some of the stages. But that works for all the sprinters.

Will you be there in team car?

Yes, I will go directly from Turkey to Bulgaria on Monday and it will be definitely my first Grand Tour. I have done three weeks of racing like back to back from races but not the same race. So it will be also a new experience for me with a lot of interesting stuff…I can hopefully learn from this opportunity.

You're one of the strong visual team of the peloton. So I think you'll bring a lot of guys to filming and recording.

We have a good media team that is coming. I think in total we will be Of course the three guys and then we have four to six media guys but we also will do a switch during the Giro a little bit with some of the guys because it's a long intense race also for them and even them work really hard.

Can we consider the participation of for Hartthijs and Tomas a kind of recognition of what they've done with the team in these years.

Yes, I think could be a kind of give it back to him in some way but also Thomas has shown that he's one really, really strong guy for the leadouts: he's good in positioning, he knows what he's doing so I think this is also part of the reason why he will partecipate. But performance came first and history after in how we made the line up cause we are focusing on that now.

If you would like to choose where take a stage win, would it be the first day, I guess.

100%.

After that, which would be the dream for the team?

I've worked a lot with Poels this year, so if we win the first stage I think that getting his third Grand Tour win is like a target that will be really special to achieve for the team also.

How tough has been making a selection with this kind of roster this year?

It's really difficult actually because we  for our team it's it's really depending on getting enough points because the big dream is the Tour de France and then we saw that we was not invited this year so then we we need to aim for more points to get in the top three to be really sure of doing the Tour de France. I think we also need to really focus on the races outside the Giro and at the same time and also before and after. that's something we have actually worked a lot on since we we the first weeks after we got the invitation for the Giro analyzing everything, calculating points, opportunities…we did a really hard job on that as a team.

The team is grown up a lot in the last couple of months...

We did a big big step up with from last year but already last year we did a big step up from the year before and also we are growing during the season because we need to improve and we need to be competable on the level we want to be. that's for sure on the highest level like doing a lot of world tour races and also competing for the win on world tour races.

What has changed the most within the team?

We have more people. that's definitely one thing. we can say that we have better top riders at the moment and they also bring in an atmosphere that we also aim to win really high races like they did in Brugge. I think that is what changed like the culture: we see that we are on top and everything needs to be on top. We have the top riders so we need to also perform every aspect on top level.

Is there any rider who surprised you maybe more than others in these months?

I think we have we have quite some surprises but for us it was not surprises for us but maybe from from the outside. I heard a lot from the Norwegian media and people I know in Norway that they are quite surprised about the Karsten Feldmann. He had done a really good job in the leadout train for for Dylan. Then we have of course Matias Kopecky, he has been really strong in the classic season, and of course Niklas Larsen, new guy from Denmark that had a really good season last year and also he’s been quite strong this year. there's not really one that is really really pointing out as a big surprise. I think also Dylan is not a surprise but he came back on his old level, so I think that's maybe a surprise for other people, but not for us because we knew what he was capable of.

And that happened I think also for the atmosphere that he found in the team.

Definitely. We are a French team but we're also a Dutch team in some way.

As Dylan case showed us last year this team has to build his roster for the next season very early. So have you already start to think about who could be a great addiction for the next year?

We started already in the start of the season to just look at riders who is not now going out of contract for 2027 and we have to see who is free in the market and with this new type of cycling that we need also to really looking out in the young generation. Anyway It's a little bit different than just five six years ago cause for example if you look at last years there have been always some good riders available in the last moment like Victor last year and Odd two years ago.