'Student loans were my income': Meet the Tour de France jersey wearer who was a club cyclist 18 months ago

Eighteen months ago, at the end of 2022, Frank van den Broek – no, not that One of them was a club cyclist, riding for a team that didn’t pay him to compete in their colours. Nothing out of the ordinary about that – he was 22. Now, however, he’s in his second week of the Tour de France, the biggest and most important cycling race on the planet, and he’s already contributed to a stage win, and he’s leading the points classification and the youth classification.

“It’s a bit crazy, yes,” says the Dutchman. Weekly Cycling of his rapid rise from devoted amateur to rising summer sports star in less than two years.

To understand why Van den Broek, a blonde with hair roller With an almost permanent cheeky grin, he arrived “late” on the scene – “late” is relative; Van den Broek is the 12th youngest of the 45 race debutants and Gianni Vermeersch is making his Tour debut at 31 – the explanation is simple. “I hit puberty a bit later,” he says, the first shoots of facial hair barely appearing, “and since I was born on December 28, I’ve always been one of the youngest participants in the race.”

At the time, Van den Broek was 21 and living with his parents. He was racing for the JEGG-DJR Academy, a club team that relied on local sponsors and was unable to pay its athletes. “My income came from student loans,” he says. “I also earned some money from prize money at races, but it wasn’t much.” How much? “Hmm, about €2,000. So, apart from new tyres and a crankset, that wasn’t enough to buy much. I had to optimise my spending based on the amount of money I had.”

Van den Broek admits that the Tour, only his third stage race, “scared me”, but on the first day he got into the breakaway and then helped Romain Bardet across the line, completing a memorable and unappreciated double with his French team-mate, 10 years his senior, who went on to win the first yellow jersey of his career. The image of Van den Broek and Bardet pointing at each other as they crossed the line will remain a defining image of this year’s race. “It was a crazy day,” says Van den Broek. “It’s all calming down now, but it was very chaotic during the weekend with a lot of messages. It was a nice, enjoyable start to the Tour.”