Shooting range, spot on the budget ranking and major innovation on the horizon: Richard Plugge ahead of Visma | Lease a Bike’s 2026 season

“I’m proud that we can once again speak about ambitions at the start of a new season,” Plugge said. “Winning Grand Tours and Monuments with both the men’s and women’s teams – that’s what we want to stand for.”

“We deliberately made a change to the men's team selection, bringing in a large number of new riders,” said Plugge, explaining the decision to replace a third of the team. “This symbolizes the next step we want to take as a team over the next five years.”

When asked what he meant by positioning the team financially for the next five years, Plugge said: “We’ve been in roughly the same spot on the budget ranking for several years — around fifth or sixth. We have a good scouting system, and that’s how we’ve worked for a few years. We’re trying to stay within shooting range and we believe in our way of working.”

His philosophy centers on developing riders rather than signing expensive stars from other teams. This approach has seen riders like Olav Kooij, Tiesj Benoot, and Simon Yates depart, while fresh talent arrives. “We’re not the team that brings in very expensive riders from other teams,” Plugge explained. “But we want to recruit riders to develop them further and help them become stars.”

He also noted that with Simon Yates’s exit, the squad’s overall spend is lower than last year. Nevertheless, every team — including Visma | Lease a Bike — must “keep up in the budget race” to retain and attract talent.

To remain competitive financially, Plugge said the team is exploring additional revenue streams beyond traditional sponsorship. “We’re looking at more sponsors, different business models, more merchandising, and other sources of income,” he said. “Foodcoach is now its own company and contributes financially to the team. Those things are necessary because we want to stay competitive.”

He hinted at ongoing innovation projects but stopped short of revealing details. “You’ll see during the year what innovation I’m referring to. We were the first to work with a Moneyball system, started Foodcoach, the Control Room, and so on,” Plugge said. “We’re working with partners to take the next step in innovation, and hopefully I can tell you more about that in September.”

Plugge stressed that this drive for smarter, more efficient performance is part of Visma’s identity. “We want to get better every day, so we’re always asking how we can close the gap with the competition and improve. We want to do it smarter than others,” he summarised.

With Kooij and Van Baarle, two renowned Dutch cyclists departed, while none of the nine newcomers flew the red, white, and blue flag. “With Rabobank, we want to bring new Dutch riders on board. Olav is a big loss, but he has a great opportunity at Decathlon, and it's difficult—if not impossible—to keep him on board. I'd love to see the next Olav Kooij come along, but that's not possible right now.”

“There are Dutch talents, but not enough,” Plugge points out. “We started with the Dikke Banden Race, Ready2Race, and CyclingClassNL. We want to win races, regardless of nationality, but as a Dutch team, we also want good Dutch riders. But we also have to develop them.”

The CEO is sounding the alarm – for the umpteenth time – in the Netherlands, a cycling country. “The KNWU has a big task ahead of it, and we want to help them, but we need to get young girls and boys on bikes. There aren't enough of them now and that's worrying,” says Plugge, who doesn't even have a single Dutch rider in his under-23 team.

So how can things be improved? ‘Take the Norwegian sports development culture, which is much better in the under-18 age groups. There, it's all about skiing, running, cycling, and so on. You can also switch between sports, as Jorgen Nordhagen did from cross-country skiing. The sports ladder is much better structured there.’