'Two leaders at the Tour was a no-brainer' - Behind Red Bull's Evenepoel strategy

The lie of the land has changed considerably since Zak Dempster was last on Ralph Denk’s team, but the combination of familiar old faces and an ambitious new project saw him opt to leave Ineos Grenadiers for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe this winter.

As a rider, Dempster joined the team then known as NetApp-Endura in 2013. He would stay for four years, by which point Bora had stepped in as title sponsor, but the squad had yet to enter the WorldTour by that point.

A decade later, Dempster returns to serve as Head of Sport at one of the behemoths of the peloton. The team had expanded steadily since Dempster left, but that growth accelerated in recent years with the arrival of Red Bull as chief owner.

This past summer, Red Bull made the transfer splash of the year by signing Remco Evenepoel from Soudal-QuickStep, and Denk has altered his management set-up accordingly. Rolf Aldag, Enrico Gasparotto, Bernhard Eisel and Heinrich Haussler all departed, while Dempster, Oli Cookson, Sven Vanthourenhout and Klaas Lodewyck are among the arrivals.

“It’s a very different team to what it was back then, but there are so many similarities that are still here,” Dempster told Domestique at the team’s recent media day in Mallorca. “There’s a really good mix of the people who have been here for a long time and the people coming from different environments, so we can create our own way. The performance team Ralph is building was a big draw for me.” 

At Ineos, Dempster quickly established himself as the number one sports director, leading the team at the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France in recent seasons. At Red Bull, his role changes considerably. Instead of driving the team car directing the riders, Dempster will be overseeing the management staff.

“I love being a sports director, but when the first initial chats with Ralph happened, it was clear that my role on the day-to-day was going to be something different,” Dempster said. “I’m going to be really having more of a helicopter view and looking at the big picture – things like recruitment and the structures that are put in place around doctors and the coaching department. There was a decision to take, because I still have got a passion for being a sports director.”

A pressing item on Dempster’s in-tray is surely accommodating the arrival of Evenepoel into the structure. The Belgian has been accompanied by Lodewyck, his former Soudal-QuickStep directeur sportif, and Sven Vanthourenhout, the man who guided him to two Olympic titles in Paris, but Dempster insisted there would not be a team within a team at Red Bull.

“It’s about making connections to make sure you don’t have a team within a team,” he said. “It can even be things like who they are rooming with on a race. It’s about getting all those groups working together across the team, including mechanics and carers.

“Then we have sports directors from different backgrounds, but they’ve got a good connection. I think transmitting that to the riders is going to be really important, rather than putting small teams around riders. It’s one team at the end of the day.”

An early conundrum for Dempster to resolve was the racing schedule for 2026 on a team with so many Grand Tour contenders. Evenepoel, Jai Hindley and Primož Roglič have all won Grand Tours, Florian Lipowitz and Daniel Martínez have both finished on the podium at Grand Tours, while Giulio Pellizzari and Aleksandr Vlasov retain GC ambitions. Keeping all parties happy will be a delicate balancing act.

“I mean, it comes down to performance,” Dempster said, when asked about his decision to send Evenepoel and Lipowitz to the Tour, while Roglič has been relegated to the Vuelta. “In high performance sport, tough conversations are had, and I think my style is never to shy away from them. In the end, you’ve all got to own that plan.

“Taking team-first decisions is important. We’re not looking to be the happiest and most comfortable team in the world, that wouldn't play out on the road like we want. So definitely there are decisions to be made, and part of my role is making them quickly and well.”

One pivotal decision was resisting the temptation to send Evenepoel to the Giro despite the lure of a 40km time trial on the route. Not surprisingly, the time trial world champion was keen on the idea of the Giro-Tour double.

“We had the chat, actually, and he said, ‘Look, I’m really attracted by it,’” Dempster said. “But it’s more about his long-term athletic development, and after all the interruptions in his career, next year is about getting back to basics and building up to the Tour.”

At the Tour, Evenepoel will form a double act with Lipowitz, who emulated the Belgian by placing third overall at this year’s race. A two-pronged approach will inevitably lead to questions about the leadership hierarchy – the opening team time trial up Montjuïc might shed some early light – but Dempster insisted it was the most viable option to challenge Tadej Pogačar.

“We’ve got, like, seven GC guys, so it’s pretty hard to fit them when there are only three Grand Tours,” Dempster said. “It’s definitely a huge part of our strategy and it’s a no-brainer that we would go with two leaders for the Tour, and it’s the same thing at the Giro with Hindley and Pellizzari.”

Indeed, Hindley is also in line to ride the Tour if he recovers well from the Giro. The idea, Dempster said, is to use Red Bull’s strength in numbers to ask questions of Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates-XRG. “There’s so much that we can do with such a strong roster and separating them all the time doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

A key question for the revamped Red Bull project, of course, is whether the team can materially boost Evenepoel’s chances of beating Pogačar at the Tour, either in 2026 or in the years to come. He was a fine third at the 2024 Tour but still some way behind Pogačar, and though he impressed at the Worlds, European Championships and Il Lombardia last Autumn, he was still soundly beaten by the Slovenian.

“Our role as a performance team is to make plans to improve him as much as possible, but there is headroom there,” Dempster said. “I truly believe that, and he truly believes that, and that’s why he’s looking under every crack and rock to find those things, so hopefully we can witness a stronger Remco in the races.”

Pogačar laid down a marker for 2026 on the final day of the UAE Team Emirates-XRG training camp this week, when he set a new record on the Coll de Rates. The task of toppling him is an intimidating one, but Dempster is adamant it can be done.

“When Pogačar won his first and then his second Tour, it was like, all right, this is going to be red carpet for him from now on,” Dempster said. “And then a kid working in a fish shop in Denmark came out and slapped him around in two Tours, so nothing’s impossible, for sure. Nothing worth doing is going to be easy, so it’s a huge challenge. We’re realistic about it, but we’re just focused on our process for now.”