Vader is looking forward to the time ahead. “It’s cool to ride for Team Jumbo-Visma. In my opinion it is the leading team of this moment. It is nice that it is a Dutch team. Therefore it feels a bit like coming home. We have talked about the path for the coming years. Racing on the road is relatively new for me. I used to race on the road, but not very much. I am very much looking forward to it. The team has a lot of knowledge and experience, so it will be good. I like that everything is focused on performance at Team Jumbo-Visma. I expect to learn a lot and to develop myself as an athlete. A big goal will be the Olympic Games in Paris. I hope to win a medal on the mountain bike. Team Jumbo-Visma is the perfect option to help me with that.”

Merijn Zeeman, sportive director of Team Jumbo-Visma, is happy with the arrival of Vader. “It is an interesting project and it has already been a great journey. For years, Milan has been coached by Tim Heemskerk, one of our performance coaches. That is why we have been in touch more intensively. He has been on a training camp with us and he has done a number of physical and personality tests. We got to know him really well. We see a lot of potential in him. He is physically extremely talented. He is technically very good on the bike. Also, his personality appeals to us very much. Milan is someone who is very willing to invest in himself and can work well together.”

“We think his qualities lie in up to and including the middle mountains”, Zeeman continued. “He is explosive uphill. In such a race program we want to teach him things. How quickly does he pick it up, riding in a peloton, a World Tour peloton? That is something that we still have to see. We are also going to look at the World Cup calendar in mountain biking and the championships that go with it. And how we are going to find a good variation in it.”