{"id":204206,"date":"2025-11-19T12:03:40","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T12:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=204206"},"modified":"2025-11-19T12:03:40","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T12:03:40","slug":"red-bull-bora-hansgrohe-beefs-up-for-the-tour-de-france-and-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/11\/19\/red-bull-bora-hansgrohe-beefs-up-for-the-tour-de-france-and-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe Beefs Up for the Tour de France \u2013 and the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you open the Red Bull\u2013BORA\u2013hansgrohe website and scroll down, you\u2019ll find a story about Tom Pidcock titled \u201c5 legendary moments from Tom Pidcock\u201d and a video, Tom Pidcock on racing road, cyclocross and MTB<\/em>. If you keep scrolling down, you\u2019ll also find an article about Wout van Aert.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What\u2019s odd about this is that Pidcock and van Aert are not members of the Red Bull cycling squad. They ride, respectively, for Q36.5 and Visma\u2013Lease a Bike. But if you look closely at the photos accompanying these features, you\u2019ll note that they are both wearing Red Bull helmets, as they do when they ride in races.<\/p>\n

Pidcock and van Aert aren\u2019t betraying their teams; they\u2019re just earning a little extra by serving as living billboards for one of the biggest brands in the world. Because that is what Red Bull is above everything else: a global brand and the most popular energy drink brand in the world, and the third most valuable soft drink brand, behind Coca-Cola and Pepsi. To further the interest of the brand, Red Bull owns or sponsors at least six football clubs, two Formula 1 teams, two ice hockey teams, and the English rugby union side Red Bull Newcastle.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing wrong with that; after all, that\u2019s why Visma and Lease a Bike lend their names to van Aert\u2019s team: to give their brands more recognition and hopefully tie it to success. The German manufacturer of innovative kitchen appliances like cooktop extractors BORA Lufttechnik GmbH, and the German plumbing materials and sanitary fittings manufacturer Hansgrohe SE are more than happy to ride the giant wave of Red Bull\u2019s global ambitions. And the company\u2019s ambitions are grandiose. In cycling, they just spent, according to Velo<\/em><\/a>, \u20ac50 million(!) to have Remco Evenepoel break his contract with Soudal Quick-Step and join the Red Bull assault on the Tour de France.<\/p>\n

\"Wout<\/a>
Van Aert isn’t betraying his team. He’s just earning a little extra by serving as living billboards for one of the biggest brands in the world. \u00a9 Profimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And never mind that the exciting young Red Bull rider Florian Lipowitz finished third in this year\u2019s Tour, because he finished 11 minutes behind the now four-time Tour champion Tadej Poga\u010dar (UAE Team Emirates\u2013XRG) and 6:36 adrift of Jonas Vingegaard (Visma\u2013Lease a Bike). For a team with the money to match its grand ambitions, that\u2019s simply not good enough. Of course, anyone who saw this year\u2019s Tour witnessed Lipowitz\u2019s Herculean efforts to take that final podium spot also might have noticed that he did it largely on his own. While other top GC riders had teammates riding in front of them, to break the wind resistance, the young German was mostly surrounded by empty space. And when he did find a line of riders to accompany him, they were always those of rival teams who let Lipowitz ride in front.<\/p>\n

I assume that the Red Bull support riders in the race were riding in support of the five-time Grand Tour winner Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d, who finished eighth, 14:30 behind Lipowitz and therefore 25:30 behind the winner. Apparently, someone at Red Bull paid attention and noticed the wasted use of team resources, because team\u00a0founder and general manager Ralph Denk has shaken up his coaching staff, releasing sports directors Rolf Aldag, Bernie Eisel, Enrico Gasparotto, and Heinrich Haussler.<\/p>\n

In their place, Denk has gone out of his way to make his prize recruit, Evenepoel, feel welcome, beginning with the signing of Zak Dempster as its new Chief of Sports and Oliver Cookson as Head of Racing, both snatched from INEOS Grenadiers. Also coming on the staff are former Evenepoel collaborators and confidants Klaas Lodewyck (from Soudal Quick-Step) and Sven Vanthourenhout, the former Belgian national coach who guided Evenepoel to world and Olympic titles, and Tony Gallopin was hired from Lotto. That is a lot of coaching firepower and a statement that Red Bull is more than serious about challenging UAE Team Emirates\u2013XRG and Visma\u2013Lease a Bike for Grand Tour supremacy. Since 2020, these two teams have won 13 of 18 Grand Tours, including all six Tours de France.<\/p>\n

Several questions remain, the major one being whether Evenepoel can beat Poga\u010dar, who seems to be improving from year to year. Can he even beat Vingegaard, who finally announced himself back at full fitness 18 months after his disastrous crash in the 2024 Itzulia Basque Country? I don\u2019t think so. The triple world time trial champion seems to lack some physical attribute that the very best climbers, like Poga\u010dar and Vingegaard, have, whether it\u2019s something in his morphology or the attribute that makes him the best time trial rider in the world. Poga\u010dar and Vingegaard are both excellent time trialers, but not on Evenepoel\u2019s level, and he is not on their level on the long, steep climbs that decide a Grand Tour. Evenepoel has ridden in six Grand Tours and has only a win in the 2022 Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a and a third place in the 2024 Tour to show for it. Perhaps with the new coaching setup at Red Bull and the company\u2019s deep pockets, he will succeed.<\/p>\n

Other questions are what to do with Lipowitz and, especially, with the 36-year-old Rogli\u010d, who would have been winless all year if not for the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya. Will Lipowitz want to ride support for Evenepoel in the Tour if he is promised a go at the Giro or the Vuelta? Will Rogli\u010d want a final try for a Grand Tour victory? I really can\u2019t see him riding support for anyone, except Poga\u010dar, in the world championships. It\u2019s great that Red Bull now has an embarrassment of riches. But if it doesn\u2019t win a Grand Tour soon, it will be richly embarrassing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you open the Red Bull\u2013BORA\u2013hansgrohe website and scroll down, you\u2019ll find a story about Tom Pidcock titled \u201c5 legendary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":204207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[8620,1221,1463,3871,831],"global-categories":[3366],"class_list":["post-204206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-road-cycling","tag-florian-lipowitz","tag-primoz-roglic","tag-red-bull","tag-tom-pidcock","tag-wout-van-aert","global-categories-cycling"],"yoast_head":"\nRed Bull - BORA - hansgrohe Beefs Up for the Tour de France<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you open the Red Bull\u2013BORA\u2013hansgrohe website and scroll down, you\u2019ll find a story about Tom Pidcock titled \u201c5 legendary moments from Tom Pidcock\u201d and a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/11\/19\/red-bull-bora-hansgrohe-beefs-up-for-the-tour-de-france-and-the-world\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Red Bull - 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