Tour de France or Giro d'Italia still unclear, but Remco Evenepoel looks set to debut in Monument

With the recruitment of Remco Evenepoel, Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe has a lot of strong leaders in 2026. Primoz Roglic, Giulio Pellizzarri, Florian Lipowitz, Jai Hindley, Daniel Felipe Martinez ... all will be hoping to be named a leader in the important race. In the classics, however, it seems that Maxim Van Gils should also be taken into account, while Evenepoel looks set for a spectacular debut.

"Looming issues", is what we previously called the new situation at Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe. With the recruitment of Evenepoel, with which the team managed to land the transfer of the year, another leader was added to the already very strong selection. How will the Austrian-German formation arrange that? And who can ride where in 2026?

Team manager Zak Dempster explained earlier. "We have a great group of guys, and Vlasov is also still there. If we want to win big tours or get a podium finish in them, we have a selection that can do that. I think if we do, it will be with joint leadership strategies," he hinted at multiple leaders in the same grand tour.

On the exact division of roles, Dempster remained cryptic. "We have to steady the ship for now and wait and see, but my way of approaching that, and I've had that conversation with them, is that there are plenty of guys to fight against who aren't wearing the same shirt as us. If Remco and Lipowitz are in top form, I'm sure it would be a joint leadership strategy."

We now know that the team is waiting for the announcement of the Giro course to decide where to send Evenepoel. "We will now wait for the courses of the other grand tours before we finalize the season plans for the leaders," Dempster revealed after the Tour course was announced.

So plenty is still unclear about the Grand Tours, but spring is slowly but surely starting to get closer. For the classics, the team has a new force with Evenepoel, but with Van Gils, Jan Tratnik, Laurance Pithie and Gianni Vermeersch, it has even more cards to play in the spring. So how will that look?

That is what Ciro Scognamiglio, the usually well-informed journalist of the Italian Gazzetta, knows more about. "Looking at Milan-Sanremo 2026, we understand that Maxim Van Gils will be the leader for Red Bull-BORA-Hansgrohe,' the Italian told us Friday at X.

So the question is: Who then supports the Belgian in Sanremo? Part of the answer seems somewhat striking. "Also, the presence of Remco Evenepoel at start of La Classicissima for first time can be considered likely, at this stage, sources confirmed us," Scognamiglio alludes to an Evenepoel debut in Milan-Sanremo.

With that, then, the Belgian would take on a new Monument. So far Evenepoel rode the Tour of Lombardy five times and Liège-Bastogne-Liège three times, winning La Doyenne twice. He has never done the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix, nor Milan-Sanremo, although that seems to be about to change.