Visma promote Reef as Niermann is kept away from Tour after shock exit

News of Niermann’s decision to leave Visma and join Lidl-Trek as general manager was reported by Daniel Benson and Wielerflits on Monday evening. Visma confirmed Niermann’s exit on Tuesday, with Plugge explaining that the German had informed the team of his desire to leave in recent weeks.

“I’m disappointed to see Grischa leave because, as a person and as a great sports director, I have a lot of respect for him,” Plugge said. “But he wants to move on and I respect that choice, obviously.”

Niermann will formally remain with Visma until August 31, but he will not be present at the Tour de France or Critérium du Dauphiné. Reef will instead serve as lead sports director at the Tour, and he will officially take up the position of Head of Racing from September 1.

“He will be staying until August 31 with us to support in the background mainly. He will do some races – not the Dauphiné and Tour de France, but others like Tour de Suisse. He will stay in the background to support Marc and the rest, and hand over everything.”

Plugge insisted that Visma had already mitigated for the loss of staff members like Niermann due to the management restructure that followed Merijn Zeeman’s departure for football club AZ Alkmaar in late 2024.

“Since Merijn left, we built a new structure with more people leading the sports department,” he said. “Our aim is always to make our organisation ‘anti-fragile.’”

Reef guided Jonas Vingegaard to overall victory at the Giro d’Italia last month, marking his fourth win as a sports director at the corsa rosa. He was Niermann’s number two at last year’s Tour de France, and he will now take over the lead sports director for this year’s race.

“Jesper Mørkøv will go the Tour de France with me,” Reef said. “We have been doing quite some races together in the last year and a half. We were together at the Giro. and we will continue in that line at the Tour.”

Reef has been at Visma since late 2021, when he joined the team’s management after a long spell as a sports director with Sunweb (now Picnic-PostNL). 

“Like Richard, I was also surprised and of course also sad about the message from Grischa that he was going to leave the team, as he was a very pleasant colleague to work with,” Reef said.

“Looking to myself, after 15 years as a DS in the WorldTour, I also see this opportunity as a logical step for myself. I’m very happy, but also grateful with the trust that I feel from the team to get this opportunity.

“After being the leading coach at the Giro, I can also say that I will take that role in the upcoming Tour de France, and my first focus will be on that. After the Tour, we look forward.”