What do Allan Peiper, Matt White, Zak Dempster, and Bernie Eisel all have in common?
They’re all ex-pros, and they’re all players in a desperate behind-the-scenes scramble to win the Tour de France.
Despite the hyped up talk that we’re deep in the super team era, there are really on two squads — Visma-Lease a Bike and UAE Emirates-XRG — dominating elite men’s road racing.
Everyone else is playing a frantic game of catch-up.
That chase to be world No. 1 isn’t just visible in mega-deal rider transfers and contract buyouts. It’s also playing out in a high-stakes hunt for the best brains in the sport in the form of coaches, sports directors, managers, nutritionists, aerodynamic experts, and data scientists.
Every team aspiring to win the Tour de France not only needs the best horse in the race — insert Tadej Pogačar or Mathieu van der Poel here — but it also needs a state-of-the-art support system that reaches into the deepest corners of performance.
As Velo reported, this year’s rider transfer season has been one of the most chaotic and complicated in years, and the same is happening off the bike as well.
There’s been an unprecedented churn of elite-level staff across the WorldTour.
Why? Because every team knows that if it stands still, the gap to the top will only keep growing.
At the center of the intrigue is Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe. Its €50-million play for Remco Evenepoel has triggered a cascade of staffing changes and backroom makeovers that is spilling out across the entire WorldTour.
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe: Evenepoel Era ready for lift off
No team has torn itself apart and rebuilt more dramatically than Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, now on the verge of entering the Evenepoel Era.
General manager Ralph Denk has been ruthless in his quest for the yellow jersey. First, he won the Remco sweepstakes, signing the one rider who many believe can realistically challenge the Pogačar-Vingegaard duopoly (though Isaac del Toro might disagree).
Then Denk took the knife to his staff, cutting loose longtime GM Rolf Aldag along with sports directors Bernie Eisel, Enrico Gasparotto, and Heinrich Haussler in a top-to-bottom purge.
In their place comes a lineup of Evenepoel-aligned allies. Zak Dempster, poached from Ineos Grenadiers, is the new chief of sports, while Oli Cookson also leaves Ineos to become head of racing.
The Belgian national coach Sven Vanthourenhout — the man who guided Evenepoel to world and Olympic titles — joins as a director, alongside longtime confidant DS Klaas Lodewyck from Soudal Quick-Step.
John Wakefield, once head of the team’s development program, has been promoted to director of coaching, sports science and technical development. He takes over the role from Dan Lorang, who will continue to work as a coach but moves to the Red Bull Athletic Performance Center.
On Monday, the team announced that Allan Peiper — who masterminded Pogačar’s 2020 Tour win — is making his comeback on the WorldTour stage, and joins as a strategic advisor.
It’s a staggering reshuffle that repositions the German squad around Evenepoel’s Tour ambitions.
With Red Bull money and a brain trust lured away from some of cycling’s most successful programs, the stakes are enormous, and so are the expectations.
The Evenepoel earthquake is rattling the entire WorldTour. Several teams are directly impacted by Red Bull’s Remco makeover.
Ineos Grenadiers: Brailsford back in the war room
The fallout of Red Bull’s staff raid hits hardest at Ineos Grenadiers. The UK team lost both Dempster and Cookson to the Evenepoel project, leaving major holes in the team’s already tattered DS bench.
Into that vacuum steps a familiar figure in the form of Sir Dave Brailsford.
After several years at the helm of Ineos Sport — including a stint advising soccer juggernaut Manchester United — Brailsford is resuming a more hands-on role in staffing and recruitment. His presence at the Tour reignited old headlines, but his influence is already being felt.
The signing of Kévin Vauquelin, a promising French all-rounder, has Brailsford’s fingerprints all over it.
Ineos remains flush with resources, but after a run of grand-tour podium droughts, Brailsford is determined to elevate Ineos back into the Tour de France conversation.
Like many teams, they might just have to wait until Pogačar retires, but the wheels are already in motion to revive the marginal-gains culture that delivered seven yellow jerseys in eight years with four different riders.
Now he needs to fill key DS roles. Kurt-Asle Arvesen, who formerly worked at Sky, is already back after a stint at Uno-X. Geraint Thomas — the rider with the longest Sky pedigree from the original class of 2010 — is linked to a new senior role at the team.
Brailsford’s pride and ambition are sure to reignite the team.
Whether Ineos, at least with its current lineup, can truly compete for a grand tour victory in 2026 remains to be seen.
Movistar: Unzué keeps it a family affair
Movistar is also regrouping around a familiar name, this time it’s just with a new generation.
Sebastián Unzué, son of longtime GM Eusebio Unzué, has been promoted to head of sports in a broad reorganization aimed at reviving the fortunes of the WorldTour’s longest-running men’s team.
With a team legacy that dates back to the Delgado-Indurain glory days, Movistar was still a yellow jersey contender all the way into the 2010s, with Alejandro Valverde and Nairo Quintana hitting podiums and winning grand tours.
Change was needed for the once-mighty squad that hasn’t won a grand tour since Richard Carapaz and the 2019 Giro d’Italia. Enric Mas landed on a few grand tour podiums, most recently with third in the 2024 Vuelta, but hasn’t been able to hit the top step.
Matt White lands after his surprise exit from Jayco-AlUla this summer, and he will co-lead the sport director duties alongside veteran Chente García Acosta.
Spain is still waiting for its next Alberto Contador, and Movistar is betting the bank that just one of its many newly minted recruits can shine in the next few years.
Lidl-Trek: New owner, new resources
Another team with big grand tour ambitions is Lidl-Trek, which shook up the GC hierarchy with the arrival of Juan Ayuso in the season’s most explosive transfer.
After German supermarket giant Lidl purchased a majority stake, the American-born, now German-licensed squad is shifting its center of gravity toward Central Europe.
Team headquarters are moving to Germany, and management is adding German-speaking leadership to keep things flowing with its new backers.
Bernie Eisel, the Austrian ex-pro and polyglot, joins as a new sports director and will serve as a bridge between the Anglo and German worlds. Former pro Thomas Rohregger, also of Austria, has been tapped as Lidl’s new head of brand partnerships and cycling.
With Ayuso joining Mads Pedersen in leadership roles, Lidl-Trek’s ambitions mirror those of Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.
They also want a seat at cycling’s top table, but at Lidl-Trek, the team is largely building out on its existing infrastructure to do it. At least for now.
Cracking into the grand tour win column
So what’s really driving all this inside-the-bus agitation?
It’s the same motivation that’s fueled cycling’s arms race for decades — the pursuit of a grand tour victory. And finding a spot at the top of the table is harder than ever before.
Since 2020 — the unofficial dawn of the super team era — UAE and Visma have ruled like oligarchs.
The two teams have split the last six yellow jerseys between them and captured 13 of the past 18 grand tours contested. The rest of the peloton has been left to fight for scraps.
Only Red Bull–Bora-Hansgrohe has cracked the monopoly in recent years, thanks to Primož Roglič’s victory at the 2024 Vuelta a España. Every other grand tour since 2023 has gone to either UAE or Visma.
That imbalance explains the churn now shaking the upper echelon of international racing.
Squads like Red Bull, Ineos, Movistar, and Lidl-Trek have the money and, at least in some cases, the riders to try to break the UAE-Visma stranglehold.
Right now, UAE and Visma still look untouchable, but even they know their dominance has a clock. Vingegaard has already learned how one devastating crash can be, and while Pogačar might be the 21st-century GOAT, even legends have a shelf life.
Like everyone else, both teams are pouring resources into scouting and development, hoping to strike gold with the next uber-talented teenage watt-monster.
That’s why the rest of the peloton is pushing hard. There’s more money, more ambition, and inevitably more pressure on the team managers, sport directors, and top coaches.
When things go right, everyone congratulates the rider. When things go wrong, it’s often the backroom staff that gets the blame.
Cycling’s management merry-go-round now resembles the American major leagues: if you don’t win, you’re out.
Source URL: https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-racing/5-moves-break-uae-visma-stranglehold/