Dan McLay has confirmed that he will be leaving Visma-Lease a Bike at the end of the year, after a single season in the Dutch WorldTour squad.
With ten wins in his own right, the 33-year-old was signed to race mainly as a lead-out man for Olav Kooij in mid-October 2024, after the expected return of Mike Teunissen fell through when the Dutchman joined XDS-Astana.
Before signing with Visma, McLay raced as a lead-out man with Arnaud Démare at Arkéa, the same team where he turned pro back in 2015 when the squad was sponsored by Bretagne-Seche Environment. In 2018 and 2019, he had a two-year spell at EF Education First and then returned to the French squad in 2020.
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Currently racing at the Tour de Pologne to support Kooij – a stage winner on Monday – McLay will next head to the Renewi Tour with the Dutchman, prior to racing in the Tour of Britain. But if his short-term future is clear, mid-to-long term is currently a very different story.
“I’m not signed up yet, so if anyone wants me for the next year or two, I’m still going,” McLay, 33, told Cyclingnews on a warm, dry Friday morning at the stage 5 start of Pologne in Katowice.
“I think Visma is off the cards, they want a big, pure bunch sprinter for next year, so that rules that out.”
McLay said his current condition is reasonable-to-good, with Pologne his first race since the Copenhagen Sprint in late June.
“I had a nice training camp in the summer, so I’m looking forward to getting back into it,” he said.
“This time last year, I was recovering from the Tour de France, so overall my legs aren’t too bad. And the sun’s shining too.”
Pologne itself has gone very well for the squad, with Kooij taking the opening mass sprint on Monday, and then McLay’s fellow-Briton Matthew Brennan scoring an impressive victory on Friday’s very hilly leg to Zakopane from a much smaller front group of around 50 riders.
Thursday’s finish in Karpacz was the one setback for Visma’s sprinters, but the severely technical series of final urban laps made it very difficult for almost all the teams, including Visma, to work as cohesive units.
“We were very happy with Monday, Thursday [stage 3] was a bit messy, it didn’t quite go to plan, we sort of all got there at one point but never quite together, so it was one to put behind us” McLay said on Friday morning, before Brennan later doubled team’s win tally in Poland. As for Thursday, Jesper Mørkov, Visma’s sports director at Pologne, simply dismissed the finish in a team press release as “very chaotic.”
Asked about how he has found Kooij to work with over the past few months as a sprinter, McLay described the Dutch fastman as “Not needing too much help, so we always try and keep it free. I just try to help him when needed, but we’re not too rigid about it.”
The Briton’s time alongside the Dutch sprinter is not yet over, in any case, but McLay is understandably also concerned about getting his own future resolved for 2026, he says. However, despite some low-level discussions, there is nothing definitive for now.
“There’s been a little bit of talking, but not too much more than that,” he told Cyclingnews. “So if anyone wants me, I’m available.”
