He says he comes from nowhere - "from the middle of nowhere". Zak Dempster once made his way from the small Australian town of Castlemain into the wide world of cycling. As a professional cyclist, the man from the state of Victoria travelled from team to team. He has now arrived professionally. He has come from nowhere to the top. In a management position with one of the most important cycling teams in the world. Dempster, 38 years old, is now Head of Sports at Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe. This makes him something of a successor to Rolf Aldag, who was sacked after the tactical turmoil at the last Tour de France - even if the official line is that they parted company almost overnight by mutual agreement.
A lot has happened to the only German World Tour team in recent years - but especially in the last few months. Dempster is by no means the only conspicuous change. The entry of the Austrian drinks company Red Bull in mid-2024 was perhaps the most visible, as horned cattle are now charging towards the team from everywhere - only on logos, of course. The most important news in recent months was, of course, that Ralph Denk finally lured Remco Evenepoel to the team after years of flirting. The fact that the new main sponsor has brought in more money has certainly helped. After all, the presumably expensive contract extension of Florian Lipowitz (according to Denk at "standard market conditions") and another year with the highly paid Primoz Roglic also had to be financed. A man with charisma has been missing since the departure of Peter Sagan - even if the breadth of the team squad is different and the assembled talent is greater than in the days of the Slovakian cycling pop star. Double Olympic champion and current time trial world champion Evenepoel is the new star among the 30 riders. Who, of course, has high expectations.
Dual leadership again at the Tour de France
The new distribution of roles in the racing team was unclear - this has been officially clarified since the media day on 10 December. For the time being at least. The 25-year-old Belgian, winner of the 2022 Tour of Spain and Tour bronze medallist in 2024, is to lead the German team at the Tour de France - together with Florian Lipowitz, who is nine months younger and will start the race as an equal co-captain. As third in the last edition, the Swabian with his main residence in Seefeld in Tyrol has proven that he can probably operate on an equal footing with Evenepoel. Will this dual leadership work better than the one last July, when Lipowitz and Primoz Roglic were rather poorly organised and poorly coordinated as free radicals and did not have a powerful team behind them? That is the big question mark hanging over Denk and Red Bull's project. In the media, Evenepoel is a jovial, bright and well-organised interlocutor. On the racetracks, he sometimes seems erratic when things don't go the way he wants them to. Until now, the ex-footballer was not necessarily regarded as a team player, but the Belgian national cycling team knows more about this.
Moderating the fine line between intra-team rivalry and aggressive teamwork between the two Tour captains could be a Herculean task for Dempster. Team boss Denk, who, in his own words, always liaises closely with Red Bull sports director Oliver Mintzlaff on important decisions, clearly believes the newcomer to the management position is up to the task. After all, Dempster brings with him the experience from his last position with the Ineos Grenadiers, having steered their team from the team car during the Tour. Denk and Dempster have known each other for a while - that could have helped. The Australian, who lives in northern Spain, has a history with the German professional team. He was under contract here as a racing cyclist from 2013 to 2016 and rode the Tour de France twice. What's different? "There are better racers than me," he says. Despite being 1.90 metres tall, he remained inconspicuous as a racer. He has a single professional victory in a small race to his name in his last year as a racer in 2019.
Helmsman in the background
But it is said that racers with limited talent like Dempster learn early on how to compensate for a lack of physical talent with tactical tricks; they know exactly how to make a lot out of a little in cycling. And the many highly talented tour specialists and young talents in the team could do with that. After all, the era of the almost unbeatable Tadej Pogacar is coming to an end, whose first rival Jonas Vingegaard currently seems to be pedalling one step above the rest. Dempster will have to decide, mediate, criticise and also disappoint in order to drive his new team to top performance. He has been told that he has a German nature, that he does not shy away from clear statements and unpleasant discussions with staff, says the new head of sport himself. If you ask Dempster what he says about the performances of the then rivals Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe at the last Tour, he grins broadly and says that he was mainly concerned with his own team, but also ambiguous, that some things were "surprising" for him.
Internally, he will probably have to formulate and work through things more clearly and unambiguously - that should be the lesson learnt from the last tour appearance. At that time, there was a clear need for action in this area. At the time, a somewhat disorganised and out-of-form squad of the racing team rode through France for the season highlight - for example, the Russian Alexander Vlasov, who had been in crisis all year, was predictably no help to the team. In addition, the solo efforts of the original captain Primoz Roglic were surprising, but during the race he was overtaken in the mountains by his young German team-mate Florian Lipowitz - who then rode alone, impetuously and visibly without a lead throughout the race, but ultimately saved the team's balance sheet with his third place overall and awakened a new enthusiasm for cycling in Germany. And shifted the internal hierarchies. Whether there were clear announcements at the time and which ones, whether something went wrong in the opinion of the team managers - that remained internal. The friendly and reserved newcomer Lipowitz is unlikely to have hit the table. One thing is certain: Dempster will not be announcing tactical decisions over the team radio as he did recently. He will control the big picture from a distance, from the background. And he will have to counter possible misunderstandings at a very early stage with clearly defined routes.
Many fans and observers - especially in Germany - were surprised that Denk signed Evenepoel despite Lipowitz's breakthrough. In fact, the Belgian told journalists at his new team's media day that his contract had already been finalised before the start of the Tour. It remains unclear how Evenepoel would have decided if he had seen Lipowitz as an equal rival. According to Evenepoel himself, he only learnt on Mallorca the day before the meeting with the journalists and their probing questions that the Tour would be his personal highlight in the coming season - albeit as part of a double lead with Lipowitz. "This is new for me. I've always been the sole leader so far. But it will be exciting," emphasises the team's new star. He has little choice but to repeat the official team strategy. His crisis-plagued year 2025, including the task at the Grande Boucle, are not good arguments for pushing himself to the fore. In any case: next July, words will have to be followed by deeds on France's country roads. A crash, a crisis of form - and the hierarchy will look different again. Of course, he will also put himself at the service of the German of the same age if necessary - but, Evenepoel also emphasised, only if he himself is already without a chance in the classification.
Many new sports directors
Evenepoel is the outstanding personnel - Otherwise, the new squad has been strengthened selectively and across the board. However, the separation from Aldag and the Dempster personnel case show that, in the opinion of the team management, there was a need for action, particularly in the area of sports management. And the new boss Dempster is immediately confronted with a tricky moderation task. Since the Sagan era, Denk has had his squad remodelled from an ensemble of classics specialists to a collection of classification riders. Now the task is to equip more than half a dozen highly talented all-rounders with prospects and goals. And to be more stable and successful - especially in the difficult stage races. A major overhaul followed, and not just in the position of Head of Sport. Almost the entire sporting management has now been replaced. In addition to Aldag, tactics expert Enrico Gasparotto also had to leave, and the German-Australian Heinrich Haussler and Bernhard Eisel are no longer part of the sports management team. Oliver Cookson, the son of former UCI President Oliver Cookson, who made headlines last year when he hit a female spectator on the bonnet of the Ineos team car, has taken over as Head of Racing. He leads many new sporting directors, including former Belgian national coach Sven Vanthourenhout and Klaas Lodewyck, who moved from Soudal-Quickstep to Germany with Evenepoel.
Roglic to claim fifth Vuelta victory
In order to nip discussions in the bud, they allocated the Grand Tours to the main protagonists before the start of the new year. At the first Grand Tour of the year, the Giro d'Italia, the Italian Giulio Pellizzari is to provide further samples of his talent. Denk has just announced the extension of his contract with the highly talented climber, who finished sixth in both the Tour of Italy and the Vuelta last year. In Italy, the second leader is Australian Jai Hindley, the 2022 Giro winner, while Russian Alexander Vlasov is set to be the third rider in the squad. There they will probably have to contend with the currently still overpowering Vingegaard, perhaps and contrary to expectations also with serial winner Pogacar. And Roglic? He has been relegated to the retirement home - he should crown his contract term with victory at the Vuelta. It will probably be his only start in a national tour. As the sole leader to be on the safe side - as things stand today. It would be his fifth success in Spain. A new record. And perhaps a nice farewell to cycling for the soon-to-be 37-year-old Slovenian, who once joined the team as a beacon of hope and now seems more like an old burden in the squad, even though he won the difficult Tour of Catalonia in 2025. And men like the 2024 Giro runner-up, the Colombian Daniel Felipe Martinez, have not yet publicly communicated a work assignment with the red bulls in one of the three-week stage races.
As strong as the team was in the tours, it was weak in the classics. Dempster wants to change that soon. Classics and sprints are also to be given importance. An important step: Belgian rider Jordi Meeus, winner of the Tour stage on the Champs-Élysées in 2023, will have to share the role of sprint captain with Dutch rider Danny van Poppel, who has mainly acted as a lead-out man in the past. Both have recently celebrated four victories each this season. A two-track programme is to be set up for the now equal sprinters, in which both will get their chances. It is unlikely that the Belgian will be granted his wish to take part in the Tour in July. Dempster sees potential in the classics squad, which made headlines last season mainly due to the doping case of Spaniard Oier Lazkano, which was made public late in the year, which needs to be better utilised - he specifically mentions New Zealander Laurence Pithie, who was unable to build on his previous results in his first year with the team, and the Dutch brothers Tim and Mick van Dijke. After all, in Evenepoel they have not only bought one of the best tour specialists in the world, but also a contender for victory in races such as Liège-Bastogne-Liège or the Tour of Lombardy in the squad. He could also score points away from the Tour, while Lipowitz is at best aiming for one-day races in Lombardy and the World Championships Canada in the autumn.
Achieving success, implementing a clear strategy, avoiding headlines about disagreements and a lack of teamwork - these are probably the main tasks for Dempster as head of sport. Denk no longer wants to talk about everything that led to many public discussions and the separation of his predecessor Rolf Aldag. "That's in the past," says the 52-year-old from Upper Bavaria. The future should simply be better. The course for this has already been set.
Andreas Kublik
Editor
