AA Drink-Leontien.nl only raced for two seasons under that exact name, but the team itself had a much longer history and its influence on women’s cycling reached well beyond its final race in 2012.
The Dutch structure began in 2005 as Van Bemmelen-AA Drink, became AA Drink Cycling Team from 2006, then switched to Leontien.nl for 2009 and 2010 before AA Drink returned as joint title sponsor for the final two seasons.
That longer lineage matters. This was not a two-year development experiment built from nothing around Leontien van Moorsel. It was an established Dutch UCI team that evolved several times, mixed experienced winners with emerging talent and eventually assembled one of the strongest rosters in the peloton.
Its list of riders says plenty about the level it reached. Kirsten Wild, Lucinda Brand and Chantal Blaak all spent important years there, while the final 2012 squad added Emma Pooley, Lizzie Armitstead, Sharon Laws and Shelley Olds.
AA Drink-Leontien.nl therefore belongs in the wider history of women’s cycling teams not simply because of who passed through it, but because it captured a period when Dutch women’s cycling was becoming deeper and more professional while team stability remained fragile.
The team started before the Leontien.nl years
The first version of the team appeared in 2005 as Van Bemmelen-AA Drink.
Michael Zijlaard was already involved in the project, with AA Drink providing the commercial support that would become closely associated with the team during most of its existence.
For 2006, the squad became AA Drink Cycling Team after the sports-drink company stepped up its backing. Suzanne de Goede and a young Kirsten Wild were among the riders recruited as the team tried to strengthen its place in the Dutch and international calendar.
That period established the basis of what followed. The team was not built solely around producing future stars. It wanted results immediately, but it was also willing to give younger Dutch riders room to develop alongside more experienced professionals.
When the AA Drink naming agreement changed after 2008, the road team continued rather than disappearing.
It became Leontien.nl for the 2009 and 2010 seasons, tying the project more directly to the profile of Leontien van Moorsel. The former Olympic and world champion had retired from racing several years earlier, but her name still carried enormous weight in Dutch cycling.
Her husband, Zijlaard, remained central to the team management, and Leontien.nl gave the squad a recognisable identity at a time when many women’s teams depended heavily on short-term sponsorship agreements.
A strong Dutch core developed together
The most important part of the team’s legacy came from the riders who developed inside it.
Wild became one of the leading sprinters of her generation. By the time AA Drink returned to the team name in 2011, she was already an established international winner rather than a prospect, capable of giving the squad a realistic chance in almost any flat or rolling race.
Her career eventually stretched far beyond the road, with multiple world titles on the track adding another dimension to a rider already regarded as one of the most reliable finishers in women’s cycling.
Lucinda Brand represented a different type of development.
Brand joined the structure before she had become the all-round rider later familiar from road and cyclo-cross. Her years with Leontien.nl and AA Drink-Leontien.nl gave her international race experience before she moved to Rabobank for 2013 and developed into one of the Netherlands’ most versatile riders.
That next stage of Brand’s career formed part of the rise of the Rabo Liv structure, another Dutch team that would take rider development and international results to an even higher level.
Chantal Blaak followed a similarly important path through the team.
She raced for Leontien.nl before staying with AA Drink-Leontien.nl and was still only in her early twenties when she began collecting international victories. In 2011 she won a stage of the Rabo Ster Zeeuwsche Eilanden and the one-day race at Erpe-Mere.
Blaak later became one of the defining Classics riders of her generation, winning the 2017 road world title as well as the Tour of Flanders, Strade Bianche and several other major one-day races. Her full career is covered in ProCyclingUK’s history of Chantal van den Broek-Blaak.
AA Drink returned for 2011
The team became AA Drink-Leontien.nl for the 2011 season, bringing the old sponsor and the newer Leontien.nl identity together.
The roster was much stronger than the idea of a small development squad suggests.
Wild remained the headline Dutch rider, while Trixi Worrack and Linda Villumsen added proven international quality. Blaak and Brand continued their development, and the team also included riders such as Marijn de Vries and track sprinter Willy Kanis.
The balance was deliberate. Wild could target sprints, Worrack and Villumsen gave the team options on harder terrain and younger riders could learn without having to carry the entire sporting responsibility of the squad.
The results reflected that depth.
Wild won Omloop van Borsele, Blaak took her victories at the Rabo Ster Zeeuwsche Eilanden and Erpe-Mere, while Worrack won the final stage of the Giro della Toscana. AA Drink-Leontien.nl finished fifth in the UCI team ranking.
It was competitive without being dominant, but the team was clearly operating at the upper end of the international women’s peloton.
The collapse of Garmin-Cervélo transformed the 2012 roster
The final season changed the scale of the project dramatically.
Garmin-Cervélo’s women’s programme ran into funding problems at the end of 2011, leaving several riders with contracts but no functioning team for the following season.
AA Drink-Leontien.nl stepped in through an agreement with Slipstream Sports and absorbed six riders from that squad: Emma Pooley, Lizzie Armitstead, Sharon Laws, Lucy Martin, Jessie Daams and Carla Ryan.
They joined an existing group that still included Wild, Brand and Blaak, while American sprinter Shelley Olds also arrived.
At that point, AA Drink-Leontien.nl was no longer simply an interesting Dutch development structure. It had a roster capable of competing for World Cup wins, major stage races and Olympic medals.
Emma Pooley brought world championship and Olympic pedigree, while Armitstead was moving rapidly towards becoming one of Britain’s most important road riders.
The two would both become central figures in the London Olympics that summer, with Armitstead taking silver in the road race and Pooley riding in support before finishing sixth in the individual time trial.
Armitstead’s career later became closely associated with the rise of Boels-Dolmans, where she developed into world champion and one of the leading Classics riders of the decade.
The final season was the team’s strongest
The 2012 team finished fourth in the UCI rankings, its strongest final position.
Olds delivered one of the biggest victories when she won the Tour of Chongming Island World Cup. Wild finished second at the Ronde van Drenthe World Cup and fourth at the Tour of Flanders, while Brand placed fourth at La Flèche Wallonne.
Pooley provided the team with its strongest stage-race performances.
She finished second overall at the Giro d’Italia Femminile and later won the Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l’Ardèche, taking two stages along the way.
Brand also won stages at the Tour Féminin en Limousin and Route de France, Daams won at the Thüringen Rundfahrt and Wild continued to collect victories in stage races.
The range of results is important because it shows what the team had become by its final year.
AA Drink-Leontien.nl could sprint with Wild or Olds, climb with Pooley, race the Classics with Brand and Blaak and support one of the leading Olympic contenders in Armitstead.
It had developed talent, but by 2012 it was also a genuinely ambitious elite team.
Why the team disappeared after 2012
The end came quickly despite that sporting success.
AA Drink decided not to continue its sponsorship beyond the end of 2012. Zijlaard and Van Moorsel then chose not to search for another title sponsor to keep the road team alive.
The decision meant one of the strongest women’s teams in the world disappeared after its best season.
That was not unusual enough in women’s cycling at the time.
Strong results did not guarantee continuity. Team structures remained heavily dependent on individual sponsors, and even squads containing world champions and Olympic medallists could vanish when commercial backing ended.
The loss of Garmin-Cervélo at the end of 2011 had already demonstrated the problem. AA Drink-Leontien.nl temporarily gave several of those riders somewhere to race, only to disappear itself twelve months later.
That instability is one of the recurring themes running through ProCyclingUK’s wider women’s cycling history coverage. The sporting level of the peloton was often considerably stronger than the structures supporting it.
Where the riders went next
The team vanished, but many of its riders were only approaching the most important years of their careers.
Brand moved into the Rabobank structure and went on to win major road races before becoming one of the outstanding cyclo-cross riders of her generation.
Blaak continued developing into a world-class Classics specialist before joining the Boels-Dolmans structure and eventually becoming road world champion.
Armitstead, later Lizzie Deignan, also joined Boels-Dolmans for 2013 and would become world champion in 2015 before adding victories at the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix Femmes and other major Classics. ProCyclingUK’s career history of Lizzie Deignan follows that progression in full.
Wild remained one of the most successful sprinters in the sport for years afterwards and added an exceptional track career to her road palmarès.
Pooley took a less conventional route, reducing her professional road programme while continuing to win in cycling, running and multisport events.
The fact that so many riders went on to achieve major results elsewhere is one reason AA Drink-Leontien.nl is remembered as a talent pipeline, but that description needs qualification.
The team did not simply discover riders and pass them on. It also gave established champions somewhere to race and, in its final year, provided one of the strongest competitive environments in the women’s peloton.
A short final name, but a much longer legacy
AA Drink-Leontien.nl lasted only two seasons as a name.
The organisation behind it lasted eight.
Across those different identities, the team gave opportunities to riders who would later become world champions, Olympic medallists, Classics winners and some of the defining Dutch riders of the next decade.
Wild, Brand and Blaak are the clearest examples of the development side of the story. Pooley, Armitstead, Laws and Olds show how ambitious the team had become by the end.
That mixture is what made the project significant.
It occupied the space between a development team and a top-level results squad at a time when women’s cycling badly needed both.
By 2012, AA Drink-Leontien.nl had grown into one of the best teams in the world. Then, despite the results and the riders it had assembled, the sponsorship ended and the structure disappeared.
Its lifespan says almost as much about the era as its roster does.
