Red Bull riders welcome arrival of 'alien' Remco Evenepoel
Remco Evenepoel still has a few more months as a Soudal-QuickStep rider, but his new teammates at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe are already well aware of what he can bring to the squad in 2026.
After months of speculation, the transfer of the year is finally official. Remco Evenepoel will ride for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe in 2026, and his new teammates can finally talk publicly about the move that everybody had already been whispering about for an age.
Manager Ralph Denk has never made any secret of his lofty ambitions for his team, and his sights have been set ever higher since Red Bull came on board as title sponsor a year ago. The aim is to compete with UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma | Lease a Bike at the top table, and he will hope that Evenepoel’s arrival proves to be the key piece of the puzzle.
The team has already been stockpiling talent, of course, and it was striking that last winter’s intake included Finn Fisher-Black, a rider who has experience of life in both the UAE and Visma structures. Speaking to Domestique ahead of stage 3 of the Tour de Pologne in Wałbrzych on Wednesday, Fisher-Black welcomed Evenepoel’s arrival.
“I’m excited,” Fisher-Black said. “I’ve ridden with guys of that calibre in the past, like Tadej [Pogačar], and Remco is another of these aliens. I’m excited to have him on the team. Someone like this brings the spirit of the team up, but that’s next year and we’ll look to the rest of this year now.”
Fisher-Black left UAE last winter partly in search of greater opportunities for personal success, but he would have known that moving to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe still meant sharing the stage with a comparably deep reservoir of talent.
The roster is already stacked with GC talent, including Primoz Roglič, Jai Hindley, Daniel Martínez, Florian Lipowitz, Aleksandr Vlasov and Giulio Pellizzari. It is, in other words, one of the peloton’s so-called ‘super teams,’ and that was part of the appeal for Evenepoel when he decided to leave Soudal-QuickStep.
In Fisher-Black’s view, the concept of the ‘super team’ isn’t simply about the resources and the levels of professional detail. The ambience counts too; one win begets another and then another, and the knock-on effects reaches across the calendar to races on all terrains. UAE’s development during the Pogačar era illustrates the point.
“I think the thing is, when you have a winning environment, it changes the whole feeling in the team. It kind of brings everyone up,” Fisher-Black said. “So having one of these really incredible riders in the team, naturally it brings the whole team forward. It makes the whole team a bit more professional. If everyone is in good spirits, then the team is working well.
“You see an example exactly with UAE, they have almost every rider winning races. So I’m excited to see what it can do for the whole team. Remco is one rider, but he can bring this feeling to the team that can make it get some more success in other places.”
Changes are afoot at Red Bull ahead of Evenepoel’s arrival. Rolf Aldag and Enrico Gasparotto have departed the management team to make way for Sven Vanthourenhout and Klaas Lodewyck, but the existing roster of riders looks set to remain largely in place next season.
Daniel Martínez placed second overall at last year’s Giro d’Italia, but the Colombian has also proven himself to be one of the peloton’s finest climbing domestiques, most notably when he helped his compatriot Egan Bernal to the pink jersey back in 2021.
Martínez remains at Red Bull in 2026, and one imagines he will form a key part of the squad that guides Evenepoel through the high mountains of the Tour next year.
“It’s another chapter that opens, so I’m pleased he’s here,” Martínez said in Wałbrzych. “For sure, with him in the team, we’ve got a very strong squad all round. He’s a massively important rider and for sure he’ll bring a lot to the team. That’s the thing, he’s coming to the team.”
