Interview with Nico Denz: "There's a fine line between focussed and over-motivated"
Andreas Kublik
· 18.02.2026
Interview with Nico Denz
TOUR: You won a stage at the Giro d'Italia last May. That makes you the only German apart from Maximilian Schachmann to have won a race at World Tour level in 2025. Are you aware of that?
Nico Denz: No! Really? I hadn't thought about it.
TOUR: How do you manage to regularly slip from your role as a team helper into the leading role?
Nico Denz: Very difficult. But I still have this, I don't know if you call it a killer instinct. We are all cyclists and didn't become professionals because we finished tenth in the junior category. Every single pro has had success in a previous life. Everyone actually has it in them, everyone wants to win. Nobody says, I'm going pro now because I want to be a helper. Everyone wants to become a pro to win races themselves.
TOUR: But you first have to be given the chance by the team ...
Nico Denz: I was always very, very selfless, even as a junior. I kept that up and therefore remained a bit under the radar for a long time - also because I simply didn't get any opportunities.
TOUR: How did you manage to get opportunities in professional cycling?
Nico Denz: As a neo-professional, you start at the back of the queue. Then you get your chance. I had it at the Giro, finishing second once on a stage.
TOUR: That was in 2018 - you lost the two-man sprint on stage 10 after 244 kilometres against the eventual Milan-San Remo winner Matej Mohoric ...
Nico Denz: I got a pat on the back for that. A week later, it was forgotten again. Unfortunately, you have to say: only victories count! You don't get many chances, you have to make the most of them. Then you get more chances.
Opportunities that must be utilised
TOUR: Since you won a mountain stage at the Tour de Suisse in 2022, back then in the Team DSM jersey, things have been going well: This was followed by a total of three stage wins at the Giro d'Italia in 2023 and 2025.
Nico Denz: Then somehow it happened. From then on it was somehow in my head: OK, I've done it before. Why not do it again? That makes it easier because you know you can do it.
TOUR: The goal of Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, however, was the overall victory with Primož Roglič.
Nico Denz: At the beginning, the Giro victory project was presented to me. And I said: I think it's great, I'm in. I spent three weeks training at altitude on Mount Teide, on the volcano, in solitary confinement, I'd say. It was a conscious decision on my part to spend six weeks away from my family up there on that mountain to prepare myself. Knowing that: I was riding for Primož Roglič. I wanted him to win the Giro. That was my goal and I thought: I'm the best version of myself now so that he can do it.
TOUR: What exactly was your task in the race?
Nico Denz: Riding at the front in the wind and delivering Primož to the front in the decisive situations. I can do that quite well.
The dream of overall victory - shattered
TOUR: Can you motivate yourself for a role as a helper?
Nico Denz: I really wanted that. The overall Vuelta victory (in 2024; editor's note), when Primož won after three weeks of slogging, that was an incredible feeling. After that, it was the logical step for me: I want to experience that at the Giro too, I want to be there again. It would have given me just as much if Primož had won the thing. And then this dream burst.
TOUR: On the 16th stage your Slovenian captain gave up after crashing several times and losing several minutes in the overall classification.
Nico Denz: I then decided for myself: No, that was so much hard work. My family and my three children have also suffered. I'm not going to bury my head in the sand. Pömi, our sporting director Christian Pömer, came to me in the evening and said: Nico, stage 18!
TOUR: You had chosen the 18th stage of the day - 144 kilometres from Morbegno to Cesano Maderno. In terms of the elevation profile, it was a day for a breakaway group between many difficult mountain stages - with many longer climbs in the middle section. But many in the peloton have their eye on stages like this ...
Nico Denz: There was no other option, that was my stage! When I set my mind to something, I'm on autopilot and so focussed that I simply block everything out. That was already the case when I went to France, to Chambéry, at the age of eighteen. Back then, I didn't even think about the fact that it could somehow go wrong.
TOUR: Back then, you took your first steps towards becoming a professional cyclist with the junior racing team of the French team AG2R-La Mondiale. In cycling, it's not always the best who wins. Many circumstances influence whether you are successful in a race. You rode solo from a leading group of around 30 riders to victory in the last 17 kilometres.
Nico Denz: Of course I did. But I knew that the first step was that I had to be at the front. The second step was that I had to survive the hilly section in the breakaway. Only in the third step did I have to think about it: How do I win the bike race?
TOUR: How is that changing - your focus from being a helper to being a winner?
Nico Denz: It's different - even as a helper I need a focus. It's very difficult to describe. It just happens in my head. In moments like these, I am able to completely surpass myself. However, I was then completely on the limit for the remaining three days and rode around the Gruppetto. I just suffered.
TOUR: The following days included stages with 5,000 and 4,400 metres of elevation gain ...
Nico Denz: Yes, exactly. I went so deep, beyond my own limits - I had to recover from that. And that's difficult in the high mountains.
TOUR: How does a project like winning a stage from a breakaway group work? Do you behave differently than usual before the start?
Nico Denz: If you know that the start phase is extremely important, then your carbohydrate intake (editor's note) is naturally ramped up before the start. You're focussed at the start, you're at the front. Maybe not necessarily first, otherwise you might as well hold up a sign that says: I'm going in the group today! So there's a fine line between being focussed and over-motivated.
An emotional victory - for the whole team
TOUR: And if it worked out?
Nico Denz: That was a very emotional victory. Especially because it was a difficult Giro for all of us. We all had the goal of winning the overall classification and then found ourselves with really nothing. It's very emotional for everyone in the team when you manage to turn the Giro around like that.
TOUR: Your goals for 2026?
Nico Denz: I see myself in my role as a loyal helper, especially on Grand Tours, who can also take on responsibility and steer the team a little. And if I get a free ride, I'm happy to set my sights on one or two stages.
TOUR: Not all the details of the race programme for the Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe riders are yet known. What would be your preferred scenario as a race programme: to race the Giro with newcomer Giulio Pellizzari and the overall winner of 2022, Jai Hindley, to ride the Tour with podium contenders Lipowitz and Evenepoel or to aim for a fifth victory with Roglič and thus the record at the Vuelta?
Nico Denz: So every option has something special. The Giro suits me, it's perhaps even my favourite race. The Tour is the Tour! And I was there when we won the Vuelta with Primož. And an overall victory like that is something really, really fantastic, something absolutely unique. It would be something very special to help him become the only one to have five victories. So, all three Grand Tours are very, very attractive to me. Which one it will be in the end is not up to me.
Andreas Kublik
Editor
