Last Sunday the mood at the Visma-Lease A Bike cycling team was still high: with the overall victory of leader Jonas Vingegaard in the Giro d’Italia, the team won its tenth major tour in seven seasons. But a day later, unpleasant news leaked: sports director Grischa Niermann, a key figure in the technical staff for almost a decade, is leaving at the end of the summer. He is also switching to one of Visma’s biggest competitors: cycling team Lidl-Trek.
Visma management had known about Niermann’s upcoming departure for two weeks: team boss and co-owner Richard Plugge heard the news during the Giro. Besides being surprised, he is also “disappointed” and “very sad” that Niermann is leaving the team, Plugge said on Tuesday during an online press conference. According to the team management, despite the unfortunate timing, Niermann’s departure is not due to mutual disagreement or conflict. “It is really his personal decision to do something different after so many years,” says Jacco Verhaeren, head of coaching at Visma. Niermann himself could not be reached for explanation on Tuesday.
Former rider Niermann (50) rode for fourteen years (1998-2012) for the Rabo team, the predecessor of Visma. He started as a team leader in 2017. Since then, he has developed as a pillar and confidant of many riders, regularly getting on his bike himself to participate in gentle endurance training. Over the past year and a half, the German was the most important man in the field of competition tactics as ‘head of racing’ at Visma.
With Niermann, the most important Dutch cycling team loses another key figure from the technical staff in a relatively short time. Eighteen months ago, sporting director Merijn Zeeman, the founder of Visma’s sporting successes, left for football club AZ; In February of this year, Tim Heemskerk, personal trainer of leader and two-time Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard, said goodbye to the team. Heemskerk wrote on social media that his departure was due to “too little room for creativity and passion in my daily work.” He has now started working at Red Bull-Bora, another major competitor of Visma.
No Tour for Niermann
According to team boss Plugge, Niermann’s unexpected departure will not have any negative consequences for Visma’s performance. His successor as ‘head of racing’ was immediately presented on Tuesday: former rider Marc Reef, who, as team leader, was in charge of Vingegaard’s Giro victory in recent weeks. Reef will also be in charge of Visma during the Tour de France – a role that was originally reserved for Niermann.
Plugge emphasized during the press conference that his organization is “not dependent on one person.” “Niermann is important, but the culture in the team is more important.” After Zeeman’s departure, Visma switched to a new structure, in which the management of the team is in the hands of four managers who “make decisions jointly”, according to Jacco Verhaeren. In other words: Niermann is influential, but not irreplaceable.
Yet Niermann’s upcoming farewell feels like the end of an era, both Plugge and Verhaeren had to admit on Tuesday. At the beginning of this decade, Visma grew into the strongest cycling team in the world – culminating in Vingegaard’s Tour victories in 2022 and 2023. Together with Zeeman and Heemskerk, Niermann was one of the driving forces behind this success. Particularly in the first corona year (2020), a large gap was created with the competition: the team used that unique, courseless summer to take an extra step in the scientific approach to training, nutrition and material – and to push boundaries in team tactics.
Bigger budgets
Visma has now been surpassed in all these areas by UAE Team Emirates of Tadej Pogacar, while Lidl-Trek and Red Bull-Bora – partly thanks to larger budgets – are making significant progress. And although Visma is still considered a dominant formation in the peloton – see Vingegaard’s Giro victory and Wout van Aert’s victory in Paris-Roubaix this year – the team has not been able to win the most important race of the year in the past two seasons: Vingegaard finished second twice in the Tour de France, behind Pogacar.
“Yet not many teams can say that,” said Jacco Verhaeren. “So I don’t think any alarm bells are going off.” Mathieu Heijboer, as chief trainer, like Verhaeren, a member of Visma’s four-person leadership, also emphasizes that Niermann’s departure is no reason to panic. He prefers to turn it around. “Our team has had a lot of success, so it is logical that other teams are interested in our people. I see that as a nice compliment.”