'If it was easy, everyone would have done it' - Bas Tietema on the Rockets’ rapid rise to the Giro

There is more than one way to start a professional cycling team in 2026. The conventional version begins with a wealthy patron, a sport-science department and a long stack of UCI points to chase from day one. Unibet Rose Rockets started, more or less, with a YouTube channel.

Bas Tietema, who began making videos at the Tour de France in 2019, has been frank from the outset that none of this was meant to make sense to other people. The Rockets debuted at Continental level in 2023, upgraded to ProTeam status in 2024, and by the start of 2026 had a WorldTour win on the board courtesy of Dylan Groenewegen at the Ronde van Brugge. 

Next Friday, in Nessebar on the Bulgarian coast, eight of their riders will roll down the start ramp at the Giro d'Italia. It is a four-year climb that, in any other sport, would simply not be possible.

"Was it realistic back at the time? Probably not," Tietema told Domestique. "But I think that's how we are starting. Mostly it doesn't make really sense to others, but it's something we truly believe in, and step by step, we ultimately got to the point where we are starting now our first Grand Tour."

That step-by-step language is the most consistent thing about Tietema. He doesn't talk about plans so much as a series of things that have, somewhat to his own surprise, kept working. The Rockets had been quietly lobbying race organisers for some time, with conversations open at Flanders Classics, ASO and RCS Sport across the past two years. 

The Tour de France ultimately went elsewhere this season, a decision Tietema has been open about, disappointing him. But the wildcard system is a knock-on operation. When one team takes a Tour invitation, it tends to clear a place at the Giro or the Vuelta for someone else.

"In general, it's still pretty difficult as a pro team that doesn't have the automatic wildcards from being top three," Tietema said. "All those wildcards are quite related to each other. The Tour de France wildcards opened up a gap in the Giro. We had already talked with all the organisers. So it was a bummer not riding the Tour at that moment, but that also opened up the possibility for the Giro."

The disappointment, six months on, has softened into something more usefully forward-looking. Tietema has reframed the whole episode as a more useful Grand Tour debut than the Tour would have been, citing the spread of sprint opportunities at the Giro, the hilly classics-style finishes in southern Italy, and the fact that the team's strongest card, Groenewegen, is genuinely competitive against the field.

"Now looking back, I see it more as a really great opportunity to learn and to perform, hopefully eventually for the Tour de France," he said. "It's now up to us to show them that we can be among the top three pro teams."

The path from a Tour de France YouTube channel to a Giro d'Italia start sheet is not a tidy one, and Tietema is unusually willing to say so. The Rockets' rise has been built on producing media around their own racing in a way that traditional teams either don't bother with or actively avoid. 

The story of the climb itself, the Continental years, the failures and the wins, the team van conversations and the late-night strategy meetings, is the product. Sponsors and partners, Tietema says, are buying into something more than results.

"It has been the machine room for everything we do," he said of the media operation. "When you start, you are just a lower-league team and the races you do are not even broadcasted. But by producing and creating that media engine, you are able to show people the journey, and I think that created the possibility to step up each year."

Four wins in the spring by Groenewegen, including the Ronde van Brugge in March, settled the question of whether the Rockets could compete on the road as well as on the screen. 

The performance department has expanded around the sprinting core, with former German sprinter Marcel Kittel now part of the staff supporting Groenewegen. Two of the eight riders heading to the Giro, Tomáš Kopecký and Hartthijs de Vries, have been at the team since its first season at Continental level.

"It wasn't a goal on its own, because in the end, other people than us also decided the selection," Tietema said of having two of the originals at the Giro. 

"It was based on their physical addition that they could bring to the team. But for us that started the team in 2023, it's super cool to see that. Two people in a selection of eight is quite a big part of the team, and it's really cool to see them there."

For all the talk of YouTube channels and the journey that brought them here, the Rockets are at the Giro for one reason above all: they believe they can win a stage.

"For a cycling team, we are quite outspoken about it," he said. "We are not going to win the GC. Specifically, our goal is to win one stage in the Giro. The first stage has a nice addition with the pink jersey, that's a great opportunity. But the real goal is to win one stage."

The route helps. The Bulgarian opener is a flat day for the sprinters that Groenewegen has circled, and the schedule offers further bunch finishes in Lecce, Naples (with cobbles), Milan and Rome that give the Rockets multiple chances to put their lead-out to work against Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) and Paul Magnier (Soudal Quick-Step). 

Tietema, asked which stage he had personally pencilled in, demurred. "I don't have a real one really circled," he said. "Us winning one is already a great objective."

Beyond Groenewegen, the team brings options for breakaway days. Wout Poels, who Tietema noted could complete a Grand Tour treble if he wins a stage, knows how to read the medium-mountain finishes that the GC men sometimes leave alone. 

Kopecký, the Czech rider who started with the team at Continental level and is now a quietly capable performer in his own right, has been earmarked for the lumpy days. Niklas Larsen offers a time-trial threat in week three, while Slovak classics specialist Lukáš Kubiš, who took the points classification at the Étoile de Bessèges in February, gives the team another card on reduced-bunch finishes.

"With Wout or maybe Lukáš or Niklas in more medium terrain or in the climbing, that's harder to predict," Tietema said. "It depends on the race dynamics or which opportunities open up. But Wout is smart and wise enough to know which stages create opportunities for stage wins in the mountains."

The lead-out itself is the part Tietema is most quietly proud of. Elmar Reinders, the experienced Dutchman who joined this winter, has been the final lead-out man behind a structured train that has worked well for Groenewegen across the spring. 

The presence of Karsten Larsen Feldmann, the Norwegian first-year pro who has earned a place in the eight despite his age, also gets him going. "He was riding there like it was just a casual race," Tietema said of the young Norwegian's first WorldTour outing. "It's his first year as a professional, and he's going to the Giro."

Tietema is open that promotion to the WorldTour by the end of the current three-year cycle is a possibility, but he is careful to frame it as a result rather than a goal.

"I'm not really sure if it's a goal," he said when asked directly. "Becoming WorldTour is more, are you able to keep up three years in a row and score enough points to make the cut? Right now we are not within the top 18 teams. But our goal is to be among the top three pro teams every year. And if we perform, with the level pro teams have nowadays, I think you're also among the WorldTour. So if we can keep up and be among the top three pro teams every year, you have a decent shot to be in among the top 18 teams at the end of the three-year cycle."

That sober, results-driven framing sits oddly alongside the YouTuber backstory, but it is the part of Tietema that the rest of the peloton has gradually come to take seriously. He has been on the receiving end of criticism over the years, including a recent comment from Thierry Gouvenou about Tietema's approach to Roubaix. Tietema, who has stood on the podium at Paris-Roubaix as a junior rider, was unfussed.

"It's just his point of view," he said. "I only try to do as best as I can. For me, Roubaix is one of the most beautiful races on the calendar. I just wanted to give everything I had to make it to the velodrome. We show with the team the steps we make, and I think that's all we can do."

He flies to Bulgaria on Tuesday, where seven years of work will meet the reality of a Giro start.

"First, I hope I can enjoy it," he said of the start line in Nessebar. "Enjoying things when you can also perform, when you have those nerves, is quite difficult. You have skin in the game, you are really invested. But I'm really going to try to enjoy the moment. The guys invested so much of their time and effort in getting here. So I also hope that will be rewarded. A combination of pride and joy, but also hoping that we can get out on this stage and show the world who the Rockets are."

If anyone had told him five years ago, while he was filming Tour de France vlogs, that the team he hadn't yet started would be riding the Giro by 2026, would he have believed it?

"If there is any sport, maybe cycling is the sport where you can climb up the ladder quite fast if you do the right things," Tietema said. 

"Starting a football club and playing the Champions League within four years, that's almost impossible. In cycling, we are now actually playing pretty much the Champions League with the Giro. Of course, not winning it yet. But cycling gives some opportunities, and that's also so cool of the sport - that you can literally set up a team that rides the Giro in four years' time. It isn't easy. A lot of work involved. But if it was easy, probably everyone would have done it."