Sam Welsford will make his Tour de France debut after he was named in the Team DSM selection announced on Thursday morning. Romain Bardet, twice a podium finisher, will lead the team’s general classification challenge.
Team DSM will change its title sponsorship and naming on the jersey to Team dsm-firmenich of both it's men's and women's squads before the Tour de France and the Giro Donne, following the merger and launch of dsm-firmenich, which brings together one of the largest innovation and creation communities in nutrition, health, and beauty.
The DSM team for the Tour is one of two halves, with Alex Edmondson, John Degenkolb and Nils Eekhoff forming Welsford’s sprint train and Chris Hamilton, Matthew Dinham and Kevin Vermaerke on hand to support Bardet in the mountains. Each group will have to help the other as much as they can.
“We head to the race with the goal of going for the GC and stage results as a team,” coach Matt Winston said.
“We’ve got a good strong core GC group that have been working well together over the past few months with Chris, Kevin and Matt, who can support our GC finisher Romain over the mountainous terrain; and they showed in Tour de Suisse that they are in good shape.”
Bardet placed fifth overall at last week’s Tour de Suisse, the latest in a sequence of consistent stage racing results this season. The route of this year’s Tour, with just 22km of time trialling, looks well suited to the Frenchman, though he has already indicated that a podium finish would be the very summit of his ambitions in July given the elevated competition.
“I don't think about winning the Tour de France anymore,” Bardet told L’Équipe earlier in the year. “With Tadej Pogačar, it’s over. It's as simple as that. If one day I manage to drop him in the high mountains in the Tour, so much the better, but [winning the Tour] is not an idea.”
Wielerflits reported on Thursday that Welsford is likely to leave DSM for Bora-Hansgrohe at the end of this season, but that possible departure hasn’t prevented his selection for the Tour.
Welsford was a latecomer to the WorldTour, having focused on the track until the Tokyo Olympics, where he won a bronze medal in the team pursuit to go with the silver medal he claimed in Rio five years earlier.
The Australian joined DSM ahead of the 2022 season, catching the eye with a stage win at the Tour of Turkey and third place at a tough edition of Scheldeprijs. Welsford has continued to impress in 2023, winning two stages at the Vuelta a San Juan as well as the Grand Prix Criquielion.
Welsford is among four Tour debutants in the DSM selection, with his compatriots Matthew Dinham and Alex Edmondson and the USA's Kevin Vermaerke also lining out at the race for the first time.
“We will work together as one team like always, with our climbing group supporting the sprint group on those flatter days and vice versa with the sprint group doing early work in the mountains,” Winston said.
“As for the route, we expect there to be fireworks already in the Basque Country with some difficult opening stages, before potentially a sprint on day three.”
The Tour de France gets underway in Bilbao on July 1.
