‘Normally, I will change teams’ - Rune Herregodts on rediscovering his own ambition and his future beyond UAE

Rune Herregodts had been wearing the Belgian champion’s jersey for barely a month when he began to notice how much it had changed his place in the peloton.

During training rides in Livigno, Belgian tourists shouted his name from their cars. When he stopped, people asked for photographs. At races, more supporters waited for signatures.

“For sure, I feel the difference,” Herregodts said on the Domestique Hotseat podcast.

The attention has been welcome, though it has taken some adjustment. Herregodts enjoys meeting supporters, especially children, but says criteriums now leave his “battery more empty than normal”.

The Belgian jersey has also made him more visible in a role that often goes unnoticed. At UAE, much of his work comes before the decisive moments, controlling races, chasing breakaways and positioning leaders. 

Now, the cameras find him too.

“It’s a super nice victory, but it also brings a bit of expectation,” he said. “If you get dropped or have a bad day and the camera is there, then you would have liked to have a neutral jersey.”

When that pressure becomes uncomfortable, he tries to return to the result that put the jersey on his shoulders.

“I just need to remember that I got a super nice win,” he said. “That’s more important than those few moments where you think, ‘Shit, I want to be more anonymous.’”

The Belgian title has arrived at an important point in his career. Herregodts expects to leave UAE at the end of the season and is speaking with several teams about his next contract.

“Normally, I will change teams,” he said. “We’re still speaking with a few teams for next year. In the coming weeks it will become clearer, or we will make the decision about which team it will be.”

He added that he expected news “quite quickly”.

Herregodts spoke warmly about UAE, its staff and the satisfaction of contributing to victories. His next move will likely depend on the role he is offered.

During his two seasons at Intermarché Wanty, in 2023 and 2024, Herregodts had more freedom to race for himself.

“I had more of a free role in a lot of races,” he said. “I was never really the leader, but a lot of times I could do my race, try to anticipate and, if I had good legs, try to go for a result.”

At UAE, an established leader is almost always present. “The moments to go for yourself are more scarce,” Herregodts said.

His role now centres on controlling races, chasing breakaways and positioning leaders before the decisive moments.

“In modern cycling, it’s a lot about positioning,” he said. “Everybody can ride hard, but if you start to climb in a bad position, you’re already lost. A lot of races are decided on positioning.”

For Herregodts, a successful day can mean delivering his leader to the front at the right moment.

“If your goal is to be somewhere in first position and you succeed with the guys in your wheel, this can be a really nice feeling,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like a victory, but it feels like, okay, I did my job.”

At the Emirati team, that work is often rewarded with a team victory.

“When you do your job very well, very often we also win,” he said. “That’s really rewarding.”

One of his hardest assignments came at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, where Herregodts and Vegard Stake Laengen chased a large breakaway from the start.

“We had to pull full gas from the start,” he said. “I think we raced for maybe three and a half hours, but it was like a full gas time trial with two.”

Herregodts enjoys that responsibility, but recent opportunities have renewed his appetite to race for himself.

“I really enjoy doing a good race in support of somebody else,” he said. “But in the last few weeks, maybe already the last two months, I got to feel again how it is to have some freedom. It gave me the hunger to have that freedom in some races and try to go for a result.”

He hopes his next team can offer a hybrid role.

“In a lot of races I can help the team, especially in the hillier races and the climbing races,” he said. “But I also enjoy sometimes trying to go for a result, like I did in the nationals. It keeps you hungry as a cyclist to take your chance and see what you can do.”

Those opportunities are limited in a squad as deep as UAE. Herregodts estimates that “maybe 10 or 12 riders” could lead other teams, with several more capable of winning races themselves.

“We do much more racing than other teams,” he said. “We race to win and we train to train. We never go to a race as preparation.”

The large calendar creates more opportunities, though riders sometimes have to compete below their best.

“Sometimes you do a race where you’re maybe not 100 per cent,” Herregodts said. “That’s the sacrifice you make to have more opportunities for yourself in another period.”

Herregodts joined UAE to work in what he regarded as the strongest performance environment in cycling. He acknowledged that the team’s budget plays a major role in attracting talent.

“They have a good budget,” he said. “They can make a good offer. We can’t ignore this. We have more spending power.”

Inside the team, however, he found a less relentless approach than its reputation might suggest. UAE focuses on training, nutrition and sleep, but does not impose the same level of discipline throughout the year.

“We don’t have crazy interval sessions and we don’t weigh our food in December at training camp,” he said. “We just do good training and eat good food. So early in the season, we try not to be already in overdrive.”

More detailed nutrition plans are introduced once racing begins. Herregodts said that approach helped him manage his own perfectionism.

“I tried to do everything 100%,” he said. “Then, when you have a difficult moment, sometimes you let it go completely.”

At UAE, he learned to leave some margin.

“I found a bit of balance,” he said. “Doing a lot of things really well, but always keeping a bit of margin. This way, it’s much easier to be consistent throughout the whole year.”

UAE is not opposed to marginal gains. It uses altitude camps, heat training, aerodynamic equipment and detailed performance plans. Herregodts’ point is that riders cannot pursue every advantage at maximum intensity throughout the entire season.

Many of those methods are no longer advantages in any case. They have become requirements for keeping pace with the rest of the peloton.

“In the past, when you went on altitude, you gained on the competitors,” he said. “Now, if you don’t go on altitude, you lose.”

Heat training followed the same pattern.

“Then it was a gain, and now it’s a loss if you don’t do it,” he said. “If you’re on the mountain for three weeks, you’re not thinking, now I have an edge. You’re thinking, okay, now I just did the basics.”

The cumulative effect is a faster peloton in which riders and teams must keep adopting new methods simply to avoid falling behind.

“We are all optimised, and then we go really fast,” Herregodts said. “The speed of getting faster gets slower, but we still get faster always.”

Equipment remains a significant part of that progression. Herregodts estimated that a dedicated aero bike can save between 20 and 30 watts over a climbing bike when teams are riding at close to 50 kilometres per hour.

“These are savings you can never out train,” he said. “In the end, we always pedal as hard as we can, and with an aero bike you just go an inch faster.”

UAE has made Herregodts more consistent and more accomplished in the service of others. Recent races have reminded him that he still wants moments of his own. With the Belgian bands now making him impossible to overlook, his next contract may decide how often he gets them.

Listen to the full Hotseat episode with Rune Herregodts 👇