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  "description": "The origin story of how three young Dutch men went from chasing the Tour de France in a van to fielding a team at the Giro d'Italia.",
  "path": "/the-blueprint-how-the-tietema-boys-turned-youtube-views-into-a-grand-tour-cycling-team/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-13T20:54:27.000Z",
  "site": "https://escapecollective.com",
  "tags": [
    "Subscribe now"
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  "textContent": "\"I still remember that when I quit cycling the first time, just before we went to Tour de France in 2019, I was just hanging on my couch for days,\" Bas Tietema tells me. \"My girlfriend was working in the hospital as a physiotherapist and came back home and said: 'What the fuck are you doing all day?'\"\n\nThere's nothing like some admonishment from a partner to kick your arse into gear. Not long after that, Tietema was off to Brussels for 21 stages of the Tour. He arrived in a van emblazoned with the imagery of his nascent Tour de Tietema YouTube project. In his mind, there was a series of challenges he'd dreamed up to complete at the race that would hopefully garner attention online. He was equipped with four years of YouTube experience documenting his days as a junior racer at BMC and the connections he'd built up by being inside the sport.\n\nThree weeks and hundreds of thousands of views later, he'd emerged out the other side, after being invited inside Astana's team hotel, releasing a song in homage to pre-eminent Dutch sprinter, Dylan Groenewegen, handing cans of Coca-Cola to Peter Sagan on Pyrenean climbs and giving out pizzas to tired finishers on the Champs-Élysées.\n\nHe hadn't done it alone, however. Videographer Devin van der Wiel had just finished university and was looking for a new project to work on, and after being unfulfilled by commercial work he was now going to throw his hat in the ring with Tietema. Van der Wiel had told his then-colleague Josse Wester, a sports marketer in his late twenties, about the project. Wester was also looking for something new after years of running his own company working on brand and content deals for athletes. They had all arrived at a juncture in their lives where they wanted something different. Something more.\n\n### This post is for subscribers only\n\nBecome a member to get access to all content\n\nSubscribe now",
  "title": "The Blueprint: How the Tietema boys turned YouTube views into a Grand Tour cycling team",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-13T21:36:04.303Z"
}