Last spring, Flanders Classics CEO Tomas Van Den Spiegel made a bet with the Unibet Rose Rockets: if their sprinter Lukáš Kubiš finished in the top 10 at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, he’d give the team a wildcard for the Tour of Flanders.
The Rockets’ owners had already been asking for an invite for years. They knew it was far-fetched – the team was only founded in 2023 as the fruit of three friends’ YouTube channel – but they made a joke of it every time they saw the event organiser. Omloop was only their third WorldTour race. Van Den Spiegel probably felt safe that his deal would go unfulfilled; so safe, in fact, that he closed his offer with a hearty laugh. But when Kubiš went out and finished sixth, on his WorldTour debut, Van Den Spiegel suddenly had to take things more seriously.
A year on, and the promise has been kept. This Sunday, the Rockets will make their first outing at the Tour of Flanders, owing in part to Kubiš’s result, but mostly to their whirlwind rise through the ranks. The day will bring a new milestone for the team; since stepping up to ProTeam status in 2024, the Rockets have already ticked off their first WorldTour event in the Amstel Gold Race, their first Monument in last year’s Paris-Roubaix, and next month will make their Grand Tour debut as a wildcard at the Giro d’Italia.
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For Bas Tietema, Rockets co-owner, Sunday’s race couldn’t come quicker. “I’m really excited, already for years,” he told Cycling Weekly. “It’s one of the most crazy races in terms of people. It’s like a national holiday here in Flanders. I think it will be an insane feeling.”
Back in 2020, then only a year into his ‘Tour de Tietema’ YouTube venture, Tietema and his channel co-hosts Josse Wester and Devin van der Wiel made a seven-part video series of them preparing to ride the 240km Flanders course. Their goal was simply to finish – which they did – and the final video now has almost 600,000 views. Today, all three are co-owners of a multi-million euro budget team that will be on the official start line.
“The progress has been really steep,” says Tietema. Last month the Rockets won four races in 10 days, including a first WorldTour scalp at the Ronde van Brugge thanks to new signing Dylan Groenewegen.
Groenewegen celebrates a milestone win with a selfie.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
And yet, even though his riders are now competing with, and in some cases beating, WorldTour squads, Tietema still sees his team as spirited underdogs.
“I don’t think it’s fair to compare us with teams that are punching way above our level in terms of budget, but also [in terms of] the depth of their team,” he says. “But I do think that, with a limited fund, and a lot of passion and smart choices, you can be super competitive in certain areas.”
So what should we expect from the Rockets on their Tour of Flanders debut? None of the team’s seven riders have any experience riding the race. “We don’t have a Remco [Evenepoel] or a Wout [van Aert] or Tadej Pogačar or Mathieu [van der Poel], so we need to do it in a smart way,” Tietema says.
“We started the team racing offensively, aggressively – that suits us – but that sometimes doesn’t work out in a result. For example, Niklas [Larsen] yesterday rode an incredible race [at Dwars door Vlaanderen], but it’s not maybe visible in the result.
“In terms of a result, a top 10 would be already insane. Therefore we need to see an opportunity during the race to find the right moment to get into the race there… For people to see us riding deep in the final, in the same way as in the first race we started, I think that would be really cool.”
‘From amateur team to Ronde van Vlaanderen in SIX years’ read the title of a Rockets YouTube video released earlier this week. It’s a remarkable story, one even they struggle to believe at times, but come Sunday, the dream will become reality. It’s all thanks to passion, belief, and a playful top-10 bet.
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