‘I thought about hurting myself’ - Picnic PostNL rocked by toxic culture allegations

An investigation by Dutch broadcaster NOS and cycling podcast In De Waaier, based on confidential interviews with 71 current and former employees, has uncovered widespread allegations of an unsafe working environment under team boss Iwan Spekenbrink and sporting director Rudi Kemna.

Among those speaking out are former rider Tusveld and Adriaan Helmantel, who previously coached Dumoulin. Their accounts paint a troubling picture of an organisation where questioning decisions could have consequences and where the management's rigid philosophy increasingly left little room for individual opinions.

For Tusveld, the experience took a serious toll on his mental health.

Tusveld traces the turning point in his relationship with the team back to the 2020 Giro d'Italia.

After the eighteenth stage, the riders were gathered in the team bus when Kemna asked Tusveld what he thought of the day's tactics. The Dutchman, then 26, had already expressed concerns during the race and repeated them in front of the group.

He suggested that the team could have approached the stage differently.

What initially appeared to be an ordinary discussion about race tactics would, according to Tusveld, change the course of his career.

At the end of that season, management told him he was contributing to a negative atmosphere. His 2021 race programme no longer included major events, and he was subsequently informed that his expiring contract would not be renewed.

Only the unexpected departures of two other riders allowed him to remain with the team for another three seasons, before eventually leaving at the end of 2024.

In an email sent to Kemna in early 2025, seen by NOS, Tusveld explained how he felt everything had changed after that meeting at the Giro. He no longer felt able to speak openly or share his concerns.

"I became afraid," Tusveld told NOS. "I thought: I'll keep my mouth shut and just say yes to everything. And that's what I did for the rest of my years with this team."

The consequences extended well beyond his sporting career.

Tusveld struggled with depressive symptoms in 2021 and revealed in his email that he had experienced thoughts of self-harm.

"I also thought about hurting myself," he wrote.

Even years later, the experience continued to affect him. Tusveld said he felt powerless, frustrated by the direction of his career and unable to understand what he had done wrong.

He eventually retired from professional cycling at the end of 2025.

His account has become one of the most disturbing revelations in the investigation, which suggests his experience was far from isolated.

Adriaan Helmantel, who spent four years coaching Tom Dumoulin, describes how the team's internal structure changed dramatically following its greatest sporting success.

Dumoulin's historic victory at the 2017 Giro d'Italia should have represented the beginning of a new era for the Dutch organisation.

Instead, according to Helmantel, it marked a turning point in the way the team was managed.

During a meeting at the team's headquarters in Sittard later that year, Helmantel noticed something unusual in a diagram outlining the proposed communication structure.

There was no direct connection between riders and their coaches.

"I think there's an arrow missing between the rider and the coach," he recalled telling management.

The response was simple: there was no mistake.

Under the new structure, communication was supposed to pass through management, which would then decide whether to involve a trainer, doctor, nutritionist or mechanic.

Helmantel believed the approach fundamentally misunderstood how successful relationships between riders and their coaches worked.

The management, he explained, appeared concerned that riders would gain too much influence if they developed close relationships with their trainers.

For a team that had built its success around collaboration, the change was difficult to accept.

"Our strength was that vibrant energy, brainstorming together, with the riders involved," Helmantel told NOS.

He recalled Spekenbrink criticising one such meeting because the experts had allowed Dumoulin too much input.

According to Helmantel, the message from management was that coaches should tell riders what to do, rather than the other way around.

"The rider should just pedal," he recalled being told.

The relationship between management and the sporting staff deteriorated further as disagreements became increasingly difficult to discuss.

Helmantel remembers making one final attempt to challenge the new approach, only for a member of management to walk away angrily and slam a door.

For him, the incident confirmed that meaningful discussion was no longer possible.

"They started becoming paranoid," he said of the management.

His conclusion was particularly damning.

"It became a dictatorship."

According to NOS Sport and In De Waaier, Picnic PostNL was given the opportunity to respond to the allegations. Team boss Iwan Spekenbrink was also approached personally but declined to comment.

The revelations come at a particularly difficult moment for Picnic PostNL, which has suffered a dramatic sporting decline. Once a team celebrating Marcel Kittel's Tour de France stage victories and Tom Dumoulin's historic 2017 Giro d'Italia triumph, the Dutch squad now finds itself at the bottom of the WorldTour hierarchy.

With just three victories in 2026, Picnic PostNL sits 30th in the UCI team rankings with only 2,680 points, making it the lowest ranked men's WorldTour team. Its struggles extend beyond results. Unlike its rivals, the team was granted a WorldTour licence for 2026 only, with additional financial conditions attached to any extension for 2027 and 2028.

The uncertainty comes at a crucial moment, with Picnic PostNL facing a 15 October deadline to submit the necessary documentation for the 2027 season.

The team recently dismissed reports that it was considering voluntarily stepping down to ProTeam level. "That is not true," a spokesperson told WielerFlits, insisting that both the men's and women's squads were preparing to continue at WorldTour level.

With the team enduring its worst season in years, its WorldTour licence subject to additional financial conditions and now serious allegations about its internal culture, Picnic PostNL faces mounting pressure both on and off the bike.