Visma | Lease a Bike's biggest dream remains to beat Tadej Pogacar
In a brief one-hour presentation and two hours of roundtable discussions, his name was mentioned exactly once. Tadej Pogacar, the current ruler of the pro peloton, is hardly a topic of conversation during the team presentation of Visma | Lease a Bike. Yet sporting director Grischa Niermann clearly emphasizes the importance of the Slovenian’s role: “Our biggest dream, what we wake up to every morning and work on every day, is to defeat the best rider, perhaps of all time, Tadej Pogacar.”
In the Pogacar era, which defines the current years in cycling, Visma | Lease a Bike must find a way to establish itself as the best team in the world. A challenge the team succeeded in during 2023, winning all three Grand Tours.
Last season as well, the Dutch team proved capable, despite the dominance of Pogacar’s wealthy squad, by winning the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España and taking second place in the Tour de France. This is evidence that sticking to its own identity and approach can lead to success.
The bar for 2026 is set very high again during the team presentation in La Nucia, Spain, which is also a requirement given the team’s status. The goal is to win two Grand Tours, to be the best in at least one monument, and to finish the season with at least 41 victories.
With Jonas Vingegaard, the team aims for overall wins in the Giro and the Tour. Right after his overall victory in the Vuelta, the Dane expressed his ambition to go for the Giro/Tour double in 2026. First, this completion would finish the trilogy in Grand Tours, an exceptional achievement. Additionally, he and the team believe that riding a Giro will prepare him even better for the Tour, where he can once again battle Pogacar.
That sounds somewhat like window dressing, since one might wonder why this double wasn’t attempted earlier. Pogacar succeeded in the Giro/Tour double in 2024. Before him, we had to wait 26 years for someone to pull off the feat (Marco Pantani in 1998).
At Visma | Lease a Bike, they point out that Vingegaard actually performed at a higher level in the Vuelta in 2023 and 2025 than in the Tour he rode a month earlier. That conclusion is based on Vingegaard’s feeling and confirmed by data. Moreover, there are only four weeks between the Tour and the Vuelta, while there are five weeks between the Giro and the Tour. This allows for a week of rest, followed by a full build-up period.
Visma | Lease a Bike’s goal of winning two Grand Tours in 2026 will need to be realized through Vingegaard’s double. The Dane will definitely not start in the Vuelta. For that Spanish race, stage wins and the points and mountain jerseys are the objectives. The team lost their GC contender for the Vuelta with Simon Yates’ sudden retirement.
Losing Simon Yates is not the only big blow for 2026. The departures of Olav Kooij, Tiesj Benoot, and Dylan van Baarle will also need to be compensated. Without sprinter Kooij, reaching 41 wins will be a challenge. Last year, the team celebrated 40 victories, of which Kooij accounted for eleven. Matthew Brennan is naturally the ‘rising star’ who already notched ten wins in 2023, but the team does not yet have a second sprinter who can fully replace Kooij.
For the third objective, winning at least one monument, the approach has changed. It’s a smart choice to have Wout van Aert race Milan-San Remo again. Due to injuries, there was no clear answer in 2024 and 2025 whether skipping the Primavera in favor of altitude training actually gave him that extra edge in the cobbled classics. Now Van Aert and the team don't want to miss the chance of possible success in the first monument.
In the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, Benoot, Van Baarle, and Kooij will certainly be missed. After two years of ‘absence’, Christophe Laporte will reclaim his place in the star lineup next to Van Aert. The 20-year-old Brennan, after his debut in Milan-San Remo, will also be positioned for cobbled work in Flanders and Roubaix. However, the question of whether Van Aert can keep up with Pogacar, Mathieu van der Poel, and Mads Pedersen, and whether he will have fully recovered from his minor ankle fracture, brings some uncertainty.
In Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Giro di Lombardia, the team lacked a clear favorite in recent years. Now Matteo Jorgenson is targeting those races specifically. To focus on this, the American is skipping his ‘usual’ Paris-Nice and will build up through Tirreno-Adriatico, skipping the cobbled classics during that period. He will undertake altitude training to be in top form for the Ardennes classics.
Although no big-name signings have been made to replace Simon Yates, Benoot, Kooij, and Van Baarle, everyone is convinced the team has not weakened. Team manager Richard Plugge confirms that salary costs are slightly lower than in 2024, partly due to Yates’ retirement. He would have liked to keep Benoot and Kooij, but he couldn’t compete with the salaries offered by Decathlon CMA CGM.
Remaining in the WorldTour’s top five budget-wise will undoubtedly be a challenge. Plugge watches with concern as certain teams gain increasing financial resources. And this isn’t just about UAE Emirates XRG. For example, Lidl-Trek strengthened at the last moment with Juan Ayuso and Derek Gee, while Decathlon CMA CGM reportedly has ten million euros more to spend than in 2025.
Still, letting go of some expensive riders does not automatically mean a weakening. “I myself started with this team as a big unknown,” Vingegaard underlined the arrival of no fewer than nine possibly lesser-known riders. Riders who hope to make great progress with Visma | Lease a Bike’s methods.
“We have never signed established champions but have always chosen riders we believed could still improve. In that respect, we have a unique scouting approach,” said Niermann.
As an example, he mentioned the third place of 23-year-old Davide Piganzoli in the 2024 GP Emilia behind Tom Pidcock and winner Tadej Pogacar. “That was a result I initially overlooked, but from that moment on scouting started following him very intensively. I’m convinced we again have special guys in the team who will surprise many.”
These riders should strengthen Visma | Lease a Bike enough to wear down the yellow collective Pogacar & co once again.
