Visma | Lease a Bike inspired by UAE Emirates XRG: "We need to do many things better"
Grischa Niermann looks back on Visma | Lease a Bike’s performances in 2025 with a generally positive feeling. However, the Head of Racing of the Dutch WorldTeam is also self-critical. “We need to improve on many things,” he says in the Beehive Podcast, the podcast of Visma | Lease a Bike.
“Unfortunately, I can’t reveal everything, but we want and need to get better in many areas,” Niermann states. “We always have to try to beat the competition. We have to congratulate UAE and admit they had an amazing season, with, I believe, nearly a hundred wins (97, ed.). We are quite far from that (Visma | Lease a Bike won forty times in 2025, ed.), but that also inspires us to work even harder and analyze every detail.”
“Regarding the races where we could have done better: we didn’t have the classics campaign in spring that we wanted. That’s definitely something to improve on starting this year.”
Successful season
As mentioned, Niermann is ‘generally’ satisfied with the 2025 season. “Of course, our big goal was to go for the three Grand Tours again. We won two of the three and finished second in the Tour, so I think we can call it a success. Although the Tour is obviously the biggest race of the year and we would have loved to win it. This year it wasn’t possible against Tadej Pogacar, but apart from that, we can consider it a successful season.”
“Was it our best season ever? Definitely not. We had many great results. Wout’s stage wins in Siena and Paris come to mind, as well as the overall victories by Simon and Jonas (in respectively the Giro and Tour, ed.). Matteo also won Paris-Nice again. These are races we are very proud of.”
