Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe: The history of arrivals and departures since 2015
Thomas Musch
· 16.08.2025
The most spectacular team change for the 2026 season so far is undoubtedly that of Remco Evenepoel to Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe, alongside rising young star and Tour de France bronze medallist Florian Lipowitz. It is no secret that the Belgian, driven by burning ambition and his own expectations, counts himself among the potential Tour de France winners. Whether and how this fits in with the ambitions and abilities of Florian Lipowitz must be clarified by the team's sports management, which has been partially reorganised. And then there is also Primož Roglič, who will soon be 36 years old and whose contract is rumoured to expire at the end of 2025.
However, many observers reacted with surprise to the news of Evenepoel's move. In view of Rolf Aldag's departure as sports director, two days after the end of the Tour de France and with immediate effect, the impression is growing that not everyone in the team management agrees with team boss Ralph Denk's personnel policy. In the shadow of Aldag's departure, the long-standing sporting director Enrico Gasparotto also left the team with immediate effect. In his place - also with immediate effect - Belgian Sven Vanthourenhout, a long-time companion and supporter of Remco Evenepoel, joined Denk's team.
Almost 80 new additions in ten years
The latest changes have drawn attention to the fact that the personnel changes at Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe have often given rise to puzzlement. Over the past ten years, the team from Raubling in Bavaria has signed 78 new professionals and released 61. What at first sounds like an enormous fluctuation is not much different from the practices of other World Tour teams. Here is an overview of the most prominent additions and departures over the past ten years from 2015 to 2025.
In 2015, the team was still being built up and Ralph Denk signed eight new riders for the season, with the focus still on German and Austrian pros. Among others, Phil Bauhaus, Emanuel Buchmann, Patrick Konrad, Dominik Nerz, Christoph Pfingsten and Björn Thurau slipped into the Bora jersey for the first time. The latter left the team at the end of the season, ended his career in 2019 and was subsequently confronted with doping allegations from 2011 to 2014, which resulted in a long-term ban.
Christoph Pfingsten proved himself as an all-rounder and reliable helper with decent placings and stayed until 2019 before his contract was not renewed and he moved to Team Visma.
Dominik Nerz: Talent without fortune
The highly talented Dominik Nerz joined Bora as a potential captain for the Grand Tours, but ended his career back in 2016 after numerous health problems, including as a result of various crashes. In 2019, he processed his experiences from professional sport in the book "Gestürzt". In it, he also describes how he slipped into a life-threatening anorexia due to the pressure to perform and his own expectations. Reading between the lines, it is clear that the environment in Team Bora was not conducive to supporting the sensitive athlete and building him up carefully.
Phil Bauhaus left Bora after two years and developed into a valued sprinter and sprint helper for other teams, including Sunweb and, above all, Bahrain - Victorious. Austrian Patrick Konrad remained with Bora until 2023 and proved himself as a strong all-rounder and loyal helper.
The best-known addition from that year was Emanuel Buchmann. The taciturn Allgäu native finished fourth in the 2019 Tour de France, Team Bora's biggest success in a Grand Tour to date. He was unable to build on this success. After - according to him - failing to honour his promise to start at the Giro d'Italia 2024, he left the team in disagreement at the end of last year and, at the ripe old age of 32, is trying to make a fresh start with the French team Cofidis.
Alignment with Peter Sagan
2017 saw the biggest reorganisation of the team to date with 13 new additions. The most prominent was Peter Sagan. He arrived as the 2015 and 2016 world champion as well as a multiple stage winner and winner of the Tour de France green jersey. Ralph Denk's ambition to play in the league of the top teams was thus publicly documented - and with his third world championship title in his first year at Bora, Sagan made his signing a successful coup for Ralph Denk.
The signing of Poland's Rafal Majka was a different story. The then 28-year-old was a stage winner at the Tour de France in 2014 and 2015, as well as the winner of the best climber's polka dot jersey in 2014 and 2016. However, the expectation of being able to ride into the top ten of the Tour de France for Team Bora was not fulfilled. In 2017, Majka was unable to finish the Tour, in 2019 he finished sixth in both the Giro and Vuelta, but otherwise often remained under the radar. He did not finish higher than 14th in the Tour in 2023 - but by then he was already riding for UAE Team Emirates in his third year.
Two new Germans: Ackermann and Burghardt
Two other new arrivals were interesting from a German perspective. The then 23-year-old Pascal Ackermann joined Bora as a talented sprinter. However, he was rarely able to fulfil the expectations placed in him, which was undoubtedly also due to the fact that in Peter Sagan he had one of - if not the - best sprinters in the world at the time right under his nose. In 2019 and 2020, he won two stages each at the Giro and the Vuelta. He left the team after the 2021 season, partly because he was never considered for the Tour de France squad. Nevertheless, he had to wait until 2024 before he was allowed to take part in the Tour de France for the first time for his current team Israel - Premier Tech at the advanced age of 30.
The second German to join Bora in 2017 was Marcus Burghardt. However, he was already 34 years old at the time and succeeded as a reliable all-rounder and helper until the end of his career in 2021.
High hopes: Maximilian Schachmann
Alongside three other new signings and re-signings, the most prominent newcomer in 2019 was Maximilian Schachmann. The Berlin native is considered versatile, a good climber and a strong time trialist. His two victories at Paris-Nice (2020 and 2021) as well as stage wins at the Tour of Catalunya (2019), a second place at the Tour of the Algarve (2020) and third place at the spring classic Liège-Bastogne-Liège (2019) stand out from his time at Bora. The years 2022 and 2023 were characterised by crashes, injuries and health problems. Things improved again in 2024, but for the 2025 season Schachmann switched back to Team Soudal Quick-Step, where he had started his professional career in 2017.
The next German hopeful joined Ralph Denk's team in 2020. And Lennard Kämna celebrated a successful debut: he won a stage each at the Critérium du Dauphiné and the Tour de France. The strong all-rounder added stage wins at the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España to his list of successes in 2022 and 2023, making him one of a select group of professional cyclists who have won stages in all three major national tours. At the beginning of 2024, Kämna was involved in an accident with a car at the training camp in Tenerife. As a result, negotiations with Ralph Denk over a contract extension came to a standstill and Kämna won according to his own statement gave the impression that he no longer played a role in the team's planning. Kämna now rides for the Lidl - Trek team.
Who remembers Wilco Keldermann?
Two names stand out from the list of new additions for the 2021 season: Nils Politt and the Dutchman Wilco Keldermann. The latter came with the recommendation of third place at the 2020 Giro d'Italia and was seen as another hopeful to fulfil Ralph Denk's dream of a top finish at a Grand Tour. However, the construct seemed to be a misunderstanding and Keldermann left the team after just two years without any notable results. Nils Politt, on the other hand, initially fitted perfectly into the Bora concept: he won a stage of the Tour de France in 2021 as well as a stage and the overall classification of the Deutschland Tour. In 2022, he proved his abilities as a classics specialist with his victory at Rund um Köln.
Subsequently, however, Politt no longer seemed to see any prospects at Bora. Success failed to materialise and in 2024, the Cologne native moved to UAE Team Emirates. There, he quickly became one of the most important and high-profile helpers in Tadej Pogačar's Tour de France team.
Cian Uijtdebroeks: a misunderstanding?
In 2022, the first year after the departure of Peter Sagan, the team underwent the second biggest upheaval in the ten years since 2015 with eleven new signings. The transfer of Cian Uijtdebroeks attracted particular attention. The then 19-year-old Belgian came from the team's own young riders (Team Auto Eder) and was regarded as an outstanding talent, which he confirmed with two stage wins and overall victory at the 2022 Tour de l'Avenir, which is regarded as the Tour de France for young riders. As early as 2023, however, critical undertones mingled with the top talent's statements about Team Bora; there were increasing indications that he wanted to leave the Denk squad at all costs because he did not see his expectations of his future role in the team fulfilled. Ultimately, the contract poker ended in a mud fight; Uijtdebroeks has been under contract with Visma-Lease a Bike since 2024.
The signing of Australian Jai Hindley proved to be much less spectacular, but decidedly more valuable in terms of the result. The then 26-year-old came, saw - and won the Giro d'Italia: the first Grand Tour victory for Team Bora that Ralph Denk had been longing for. However: With the exception of a stage win at the 2023 Tour de France, Hindley has not achieved much since then.
Unclear perspective: Aleksandr Vlasov
The third prominent new signing for the 2022 season did not bring Tema Bora and its boss Ralph Denk the success they had hoped for. Russian Aleksandr Vlasov was bought in as the man to beat in the overall classification of a Grand Tour, but was unable to live up to this claim. His victory at the 2022 Tour de Romandie fuelled hopes of future success for some time, but apart from a stage win at Paris-Nice and second place at the Tour de Romandie this spring, Vlasov has made few appearances. At the Tour de France this year, in which Team Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe did not cut a particularly good figure overall (with the exception of Florian Lipowitz's performance), the 29-year-old Russian appeared out of shape and indisposed.
In 2023, Florian Lipowitz was included in the World Tour squad - his successes and skills can be found at has already been reported in detail elsewhere. It will be exciting to see how his further development progresses, how the - in part new - team management supports him and how his co-existence with Remco Evenepoel influences the future direction of the team.
Primož Roglič: Second Grand Tour victory for Bora
In 2024, Ralph Denk finally recruited Primož Roglič, the most successful and probably also the most expensive professional in the team's history alongside Peter Sagan. At this point, he already had a glittering and well-filled palmarès, including two victories each at the Tour de Romandie, the Tour of Catalonia, the Critérium du Dauphine, the Tour of the Basque Country and Tirreno-Adriatico, as well as overall victory at the 2023 Giro d'Italia and three overall victories at the Tour of Spain (2019, 2020 and 2021).
You could also say that Roglič had actually already won everything - except the Tour de France, which he was supposed to tackle in 2024. However, after a crash on the twelfth stage, he had to abandon the race due to injury. In August, he held himself reasonably unscathed with his fourth victory in total at the Tour of Spain, giving his team boss his second Grand Tour victory after Jai Hindley's Giro success.
In the past, the team boss has repeatedly been told that he loses interest in riders who do not fulfil his expectations relatively quickly and lets them languish in the depths of the squad. The contract of Primož Roglič, who will soon be 36 years old, expires at the end of the year. Has the Slovenian done his duty - and can he leave like so many before him?
Remco with "Lipo"? Remco versus "Lipo"?
Overall victories at the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España - that's more than most other World Tour teams can boast after decades of membership in cycling's upper echelons. However: Ralph Denk's ambition is different, winning the Tour is his declared goal and guiding principle. It will be exciting to see how the team boss utilises the established star Evenepoel - and the up-and-coming Florian Lipowitz. The soon-to-be 25-year-old Swabian has only completed one Tour de France - but there are quite a few observers who consider Lipowitz to be the more suitable of the two top riders when it comes to fighting for the yellow jersey at the Tour. As things stand today, it is hard to imagine that the extremely versatile Evenepoel will give in.
Thomas Musch
Publisher
