Little hard news has come out about the money involved, especially about how much in penalties Evenepoel and/or his new team had to pay Soudal for the world time trial champion breaking his contract one year before it was due to expire. Minimum compensation due to Soudal was at least six months of Evenepoel’s annual salary, which is €5 million. So Red Bull’s bill for the transfer was at least €2.5 million, but you can confidently bet the house on the fact that it was more than that – a lot more.
As for Evenepoel’s new salary, several reports citing the Italian publication La Gazzetta dello Sport say that he will earn €8 million a year at his new team, while Velo reported that his base salary would be €6-7 million but could rise to more than €20 million due to performance-based bonuses. That’s a lot of cheese. But that’s not all he will be given. It’s well known that Evenepoel has never been satisfied with the support riders signed by Soudal Quick-Step and believed that with more talented domestiques, he could win the Tour de France. Red Bull will certainly bend over backwards to give him who he thinks he needs.
In the meantime, as already noted above, Soudal has been very busy, using the proceeds from the transfer to reshape itself into the team it was before Evenepoel joined them: a team that wins Grand Tour stages and one-day races. So far, it has signed Jasper Stuyven (from Lidl-Trek), Dylan van Baarle (Visma–Lease a Bike), and Edward Planckaert (Alpecin-Deceuninck). The 33-year-old van Baarle has experience and legs; he won Dwars door Vlaanderen in 2021, Paris-Roubaix the following year, and Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in 2023, his first year at Visma. He was also the Dutch national road race champion that year, but illness and injuries affected his performance after that.
Stuyven is also 33 and has a decent one-day record, winning Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in 2020 and Milan–San Remo the following year. He also had an excellent second place in last year’s E3 Saxo Classic behind Mathieu van der Poel. For his part, Planckaert has only one win to his name, the 2021 Vuelta a Burgos, but he has been a strong and reliable support rider for van der Poel and Jasper Philipsen. All three give Soudal Quick-Step experience and strength in the peloton to aid reigning European champion Tim Merlier, who won two stages in the Tour this year, and Merlier’s promising 21-year-old sprinting protégé, Paul Magnier.
Other transfers of note are that of the 24-year-old American Kevin Vermaerke from Picnic PostNL to UAE Team Emirates–XRG. Vermaerke is versatile and talented. He won the Under-23 Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2019, beating Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck), and twice finished third in the Arctic Race of Norway.
Three-time Hungarian champion Attila Valter moved from Visma–Lease a Bike to Bahrain-Victorious, where he will be expected to support rising star Lenny Martinez, Antonio Tiberi and Santiago Buitrago in their quest for GC wins. Also moving to the Bahrain squad, from Lotto, is the 22-year-old time trial specialist, Alec Segaert. Segaert has won the last three European Under-23 Time Trial Championships and twice finished second in the World Under-23 ITT Championships.
It’s still early in the transfer season. Expect plenty of moves later in the year, especially from Red Bull–BORA–Hansgrohe, which now has three top GC riders: Evenepoel, 24-year-old Florian Lipowitz, who finished third in this year’s Tour de France, and 35-year-old superstar Primož Roglič, whose contract expires at the end of next year. It’s going to cost them another bundle to keep all three happy.
