'It doesn't depend on one person': But is it business as usual for Vingegaard and Visma after Niermann exit?

Word of Grischa Niermann’s shock departure from Visma | Lease a Bike broke on Monday night, but the team moved quickly to respond publicly to the news, with manager Richard Plugge convening a video press conference for Tuesday morning.

Indeed, Visma had already made a swift reaction internally, and Plugge confirmed on Tuesday that Marc Reef will be promoted to the vacant role of Head of Racing when Niermann formally leaves the team on August 31. 

More immediately, Reef will take over as Visma’s lead sports director for the Tour de France, with Niermann essentially on gardening leave until he joins Lidl-Trek. Plugge said on Tuesday that Niermann would work in the “background” over the summer as part of the handover process.

Niermann is the latest high-profile departure from Visma’s staff after previous Head of Racing Merijn Zeeman joined football club AZ Alkmaar at the end of 2024 and Jonas Vingegaard’s long-term coach Tim Heemskerk left at the start of this season before recently linking up with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.

Plugge conceded that Niermann’s desire to leave had come out of the blue, but he insisted that Visma’s existing structure would allow the team to absorb the blow. The message Plugge sought to convey on Tuesday was one of continuity, as he repeatedly pointed to how the team’s management set-up had been altered after Zeeman’s departure precisely to prevent too much reliance on any one individual. Niermann had been promoted from a sports director role to Head of Racing to coincide with Zeeman’s exit.

“Since Merijn left, we built a new structure with more people leading the sports department, and our aim is always to make our organisation ‘anti-fragile,’” Plugge said. “For the last year and a half, we have had Robbert de Groot, Patrick Broe, Mathieu Heijboer, Jacco Verhaeren and Grisha forming that sports management.

“We have a really strong culture which we have built since, let’s say, 2015, where people who come in embrace this culture and they are developed within this culture. We have the successor already in our team and he’s a very capable and a very good guy for taking over this role. I think the culture over our team is the most important thing: it doesn’t depend on one person.”

Even so, Niermann was a hugely important individual in the Visma set-up. His formal job description as Head of Racing included “race strategy, selection, and the overall composition of the rider groups,” but his significance as a figurehead stretched beyond those tasks. 

Niermann also played a pivotal role in the team’s identification and recruitment of new signings, and, above all, his was a key voice during the team’s dominant Tour de France victories in 2022 and 2023.

“What I see with him is that he’s really standing in the group,” Reef said of his predecessor on Tuesday. “At some moments he’s one of them, and at other moments he’s also standing above them. That is something I admire and it’s also an example for me.”

Unlike Zeeman’s departure, which was flagged several months in advance, Niermann’s decision to leave Visma was only communicated in the last few weeks. While Visma had ample time to make the necessary tweaks to their structure in 2024, they have had to move far more quickly this time around.

“I was surprised when Grischa called me a couple of weeks ago to share his decision to leave,” Plugge said. “He had really just started in his new role, and he was developing more and more in this new role. I’m disappointed to see him leave because as a person and as a great sports director, I have a lot of respect for him.”

Niermann is also a symbolic figure in the Visma story and its metamorphosis over the years. He spent his entire professional career as a rider with the team during its Rabobank era, retiring at the end of 2012 just as the bank withdrew its longstanding sponsorship due to revelations of doping at the squad. Richard Plugge took over as team manager on Rabobank’s withdrawal, with the WorldTour team renamed ‘Blanco’ until it secured new sponsors.

That winter, Niermann confessed that he had doped between 2000 and 2003, and he was handed a six-month ban. He soon returned to cycling, however, serving as a sports director with the Rabobank development team before re-joining Plugge’s WorldTour team as a sports director in 2017.

Plugge pushed back slightly against the idea, however, that Niermann’s exit marked the end of an era for Visma.

“The moment we started to build on this culture was in 2015 and 2016, and Grischa was not part of the team then,” Plugge said. “But then he embraced this culture big time, so now I would say, it’s an end of an era with Grischa, because he became a good friend in the past years and of course a valued sports director on our team.”

Daniel Benson has reported that Niermann will join Lidl-Trek as general manager, replacing Luca Guercilena and working under new CEO Andy Schleck. Plugge, however, declined to confirm Niermann’s destination.

“He told me that he wants to do something different, and he will get the opportunity to tell you also his reasons,” said Plugge. “I asked him, ‘Is there something I can do to keep you?’ But it’s a personal idea of his to leave.”

Plugge dismissed the idea that the departures of Niermann and Vingegaard’s coach Heemskerk were indicative of financial constraints at Visma | Lease a Bike, who are currently searching for a new title sponsor. “It’s not a question,” he said. “For Grischa, it’s a personal decision. In Tim’s case, it was a mutual agreement.” 

The managerial shake-up comes immediately after Vingegaard completed a full set of Grand Tour victories at the Giro d’Italia on Sunday, and he is now switching his attention to the Tour de France. Niermann was Vingegaard’s sports director for all five of his Tour appearances, including his victories of 2022 and 2023.

“Jonas was in the first instance, of course, like you, probably surprised,” Plugge said. “But he’s just won the Giro with Marc Reef sitting there with him, so he also saw the opportunity maybe to do it even better. It will not hurt us or his preparation.”

Even so, Vingegaard has now lost two of his longstanding collaborators following Heemskerk’s switch to Red Bull. Mathieu Heijboer took over as the Dane’s coach at the start of the season.

“He’s very happy with Mathieu Heijboer as his new coach,” Plugge insisted. “He wanted to do some new things, and he was really happy that Mathieu is open to these new ideas. They were working hard on this and he showed big progress in his numbers, et cetera, in the past months. He feels there’s still progress to be made for the coming weeks to be ready for the start of the Tour in Barcelona.”

Niermann hasn’t formally left the building just yet, but life without him has already begun for Visma and Vingegaard. Business as usual? For better of for worse, time will tell.