Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe performance experts 'scared but confident' about improving Evenepoel

"I think it's scary," said Bigham to Cycling Weekly, "to bring in the Olympic champion, a three-time world champion… where do you go from there? But it comes back to trusting everything about the process."

The performance duo, now entering their second season with the team, believe that even riders at Evenepoel's level have room for significant improvement. Bigham, who previously worked with Ineos Grenadiers, emphasised that their approach is based on the premise that no athlete is perfect.

"Just because he's achieved performance doesn't mean everything's perfect, and I think you have to accept that. That has to be your base premise: he is flawed in how he's done things – everybody is, we're definitely not near perfection yet. Therefore, there is more performance to be found," Bigham explained.

Despite Evenepoel's impressive palmares, which includes a double Olympic gold in Paris, three ITT and one road race world championship titles, and two victories at Liège-Bastogne-Liège as well as the Vuelta a España in 2022, the performance experts remain confident they can enhance his capabilities.

"We haven't mastered it yet, but there's plenty of work to be done, and I think we will improve him. I hope we'll improve him," said Bigham. "It's a scary thing, for sure, but I think we can't be afraid of changing some aspects of what he does, or how he does things, because as long as you trust everything about your models, your process, then it's completely justified. Hopefully, we make him even more outrageous than he already is."

Wale emphasised that their methodology is applied consistently across the team, regardless of a rider's status or achievements.

"You don't treat Remco any differently than you treat anybody else," said Wale. "Maybe he's going to probably get more financial resources put into his project, which is deserved, but how we work and how we want to work going forward is the same from the U19s all the way up to your Remco's. We're a team. What we do isn't just for one guy."

The goal for Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe extends beyond individual success, with Bigham outlining ambitious team objectives. "We want to win with everybody," Bigham stressed. "We want to do podium lockouts, stack the top 10s, just be dominant."

While Evenepoel represents a significant piece of Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe's puzzle for the 2025 season, the team's systematic approach to performance improvement applies to their entire roster as they seek collective dominance in the peloton.

Beyond Evenepoel, there is also a significant change in the backroom staff, with the team announcing on Thursday that Zak Dempster had been appointed as the new Chief of Sports. Meanwhile, Tony Gallopin, Oliver Cookson, as well as Sven Vanthourenhout and Klaas Lodewyck, both of whom Evenepoel knows well, have also joined for the 2026 season.