‘Every sport needs competition’ - Bas Tietema questions UAE’s grip on cycling

At this point, Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates appear untouchable. Their grip on the peloton stretches from Grand Tours to one-day races, with a roster so deep it sometimes feels like a different UAE rider wins every week. The team claimed 95 victories this season, a number that underlines both their strength and their stranglehold over the current peloton.

For most teams, that level of control is something to aspire to. For Bas Tietema, founder and general manager of the Unibet Rose Rockets, it is both impressive and worrying, a sign of how far the sport has tilted towards predictability.

“I think every sport has an interest of a competitive field where it's not known upfront who is going to win,” Tietema said in the latest edition of the Domestique Hotseat podcast. “You want to have excitement.”

That excitement, he believes, comes from uncertainty in races. When the outcome feels inevitable, it can make the races feel like something is lost. Tietema points to other sports that have built mechanisms to keep competition alive. “For example, in America, you have that first pick and the draft system. That’s also a way to create, for example, a more fairness or equal level playing field.”

He wonders if cycling could learn from those examples. “A cap is maybe another way of making it more equal,” he said. “But then you also get like... especially at this moment, you have teams who are really far above the rest and you have teams who are really...”

Tietema doesn’t claim to have the perfect solution. “I'm not informed enough on what's the best model for the sport to make it more equal,” he admitted. “But every sport has an interest of making it competitive.”

His point is not to criticise UAE Team Emirates-XRG for their success. “It's not the fault of the bigger teams because they are doing things right and they win a lot,” he said. “But for the sport in general, you don't want it to become boring.”

For Tietema, the issue is balance, the space between greatness and monotony. “It's a thin balance because on one hand you want to have heroes and you want to have people, characters,” he said. “Therefore, you need to have riders who win more often than others. But then the moment when it starts to get boring, I think then that's too far.”

That balance, he said, has felt particularly fragile in 2025 where the Emirati team achieved a record-breaking 95 victories across 20 different riders. “UAE smashed all records this year,” Tietema said. 

“But I still believe that in sports there will always be a new rider or someone else coming up.” Even dominance, he argues, has an expiry date. “Even if you have people getting older, changes in management, there are so many reasons things can change. And there's always a new kid on the block.”

History, he says, proves the point. “For example, Ferrari dominated Formula One. It's really struggling the last years. It's not that long ago that Team Sky was winning every Tour de France and dominating every race. And this whole Sky Train was a thing. Right now, they are struggling.”

For Tietema, this cycle of rise, dominance and decline is the essence of sport. “In the end, I don't know what's the reason behind it, but it's so hard in sports when everyone is chasing you to keep up,” he said. “They are dominating this year. They are doing super good. They win a lot of races, but in the end, I think there will always be a new rider or someone else coming up. But yeah, you never know when that moment will be.”

In a season defined by one team’s supremacy, his message feels like both a warning and a reminder. The beauty of cycling, as he puts it, is that no empire lasts forever, and the next challenger may already be on the rise.

Enjoy the full Hotseat episode with Bas 👇