In recent years, there has been an increasing tendency for footballers from Europe’s top leagues to cross the Atlantic and seek one final, hefty pay day in Major League Soccer, but Laurens ten Dam can only smile when asked to compare his relocation to the United States in 2016 with those of Messrs. Pirlo, Gerrard et al.
Given that his original intention was to race simply on the perennially cash-strapped domestic circuit in the US, after all, financial considerations scarcely entered the equation as Ten Dam set about planning his American adventure.
“For the love of cycling, I wanted to get back to basics. Standing next to a car in my naked ass changing my bibs instead of being on a fancy bus doesn’t matter to me, you know, so that’s why I was ready to race for Jelly Belly or Bissell,” Ten Dam told Cyclingnews at the Giant-Alpecin presentation in Berlin last week.
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Not that the love of a more rustic form of cycling was the primary reason for Ten Dam’s decision. When he reached Paris in a state of exhaustion at the end of last year’s Tour de France, the Dutchman counted backwards 100 days and realised that he had spent a total of ten nights at home with his wife and young family in that period. At 35 years of age and 13 years into his professional career, Ten Dam felt that something had to give. A training crash ten days after the Tour convinced him.
“After the Tour, man, I was done with Europe, because I wanted to balance my family life, and I decided I wanted to go to the US,” Ten Dam explained. “It was what I wanted ten years ago, and I’ve done everything in cycling that I wanted, and I wanted to just go and ride for a domestic team – and that’s certainly not for the money because a domestic team doesn’t pay much.”
Ten Dam’s agent Joao Correia was, rather understandably, reluctant for Ten Dam to slip quietly away from the European scene when a steady stream of WorldTour teams were still interested in paying a more competitive salary for his services, and he persuaded the Dutchman to give him time to broker a compromise solution.
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