Do we take the same approach and start over? While the opening two months of the season have seemed plain sailing for many, the same can’t be said for Visma-Lease a Bike, with the Dutch team opening 2026 embroiled with injuries, a weakened roster, and a cloud of comments from ex-riders and staff exits. The squad that once dominated the cycling world now finds itself at a crossroads, and the consequences are starting to pile up in ways that go far beyond the usual turnover any team experiences in an off-season.
The Ghost of Heemskerk and Lost Trust
After eight years, performance coach Tim Heemskerk would be leaving Team Visma Lease a Bike in what feels like another late shift as the 2026 race season gets underway, having been part of the performance staff led by Mathieu Heijboer and worked closely with Jonas Vingegaard as his long-time trainer and coach. This wasn’t just any staff departure. Heemskerk and Vingegaard both joined Visma ahead of the 2019 season and have worked together ever since, winning two Tours de France, the Vuelta a España and 42 races during their coaching collaboration.
“Over the past period, I have noticed that I was struggling to continue applying my creativity and passion, which are important to me in my work as a coach,” Heemskerk said.
The coach’s departure comes at precisely the worst moment. Heemskerk’s decision to leave comes after Vingegaard’s 2026 season start was derailed by a crash in training and illness, forcing him to pull out of the UAE Tour, with his first race now set to be at the Volta a Catalunya, starting on March 23.
For Vingegaard losing a trusted coach and teammates such as Simon Yates is significant, and he has acknowledged it as a “big blow.”
A Hemorrhage of Talent That Won’t Stop
The losses don’t end with Heemskerk. Over the winter, Visma-Lease a Bike haemorrhaged a host of top riders, with several crucial Classics names and loyal lieutenants heading out.
Dylan van Baarle, Tiesj Benoot, Olav Kooij, and Cian Uijtdebroeks were among the top-level names who have moved to rival teams, with no incomings of a similar stature to speak of, all that was before we got to the Simon Yates debacle, with the Giro d’Italia champion suddenly deciding to rip up his contract and end his career on January 7, depriving the team of a key GC leader and super-domestique for Vingegaard.
This isn’t the normal wear and tear of professional cycling. Attila Valter, the former Hungarian national champion, also made the decision to leave Team Visma–Lease a Bike after three years, moving to Bahrain Victorious, and in 2025, he wasn’t selected to ride in any of the Grand Tours, a situation that contributed to the decision.
“The lines were too narrow” at the former team, with Hungarian rider Attila Valter telling cycling news that a change of direction followed after the departure of Merijn Zeeman, the team’s long-term sports director, when “Merijn left, it changed, and the team also felt a lot of pressure from outside, that we wanted to get back to the top, but we weren’t at the top.”
Searching for Solutions When None Exist
With Matteo Jorgenson committed to the Tour de France while prioritizing the World Championships in Canada over the Vuelta, the team is left without a dedicated GC leader for the Vuelta, which will be the first time that Visma enter a Grand Tour without a GC leader since the 2022 Giro d’Italia. The departures sent a clear message to anyone paying attention: something at Visma had shifted, and not everyone could adapt to it anymore.
The team has made moves to address the void. The arrival of Bruno Armirail is a luxury reinforcement for all terrains and, above all, for long-distance work in grand tours, a rider capable of setting the pace for kilometers in long passes and of taking responsibility in the chase when the race breaks down. Yet these are not the marquee signings that would typically land a team trying to reclaim its throne. They are the practical signings of a team managing decline rather than accelerating growth.
The Money Problem That Won’t Go Away
Behind all the personnel shuffling sits the real crisis: money. Visma, a Norwegian business software company, is not prepared to continue increasing its budget and will instead take a step back from the team, without pulling away entirely.
The team is believed to have the fifth or sixth biggest budget in the men’s WorldTour but team manager Richard Plugge needs to increase his budget by around €10 million to close the gap on his super team rivals and stay competitive in Grand Tours and major Classics, with the Dutch team able to count on continued sponsorship from Lease a Bike, Skoda, Cervélo, Jumbo supermarkets, SRAM and Rabobank, but Visma was not able or willing to make the “next step” beyond 2026, and Plugge needs a new title sponsor that will cover most of Visma’s €20 million sponsorship and increase it by at least €10 million.
Visma-Lease a Bike are seeking a new title sponsor as the Dutch team seek to keep up in cycling’s budgetary arms race with other top teams including UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Decathlon-CMA CGM, and Lidl-Trek. This isn’t a new problem for cycling. It’s the natural consequence of a sport that measures dominance in millions spent rather than races won.
Spinning the Narrative While Everything Breaks
Team management insists everything is under control. Grischa Niermann responded: “We have our own ideas and ways of working. We take an individual approach with every rider, and you can’t make it perfect for everyone. Some then decide to leave,” with the sporting director adding that “People are free to say what they want in the press, but some things get taken out of context or exaggerated,” and that “We have a lot of riders who are very happy in the team and with how it functions.”
Yet the facts speak differently. A bruising start to 2026 has raised doubts around Visma and Vingegaard, but the “Killer Bees” always seem to bounce back from adversity, with Visma at a crossroads in 2026, but after a bumpy start, it’s too soon to write the team off yet. The question is whether even Vingegaard’s enduring brilliance can carry this team through what looks like a fundamental crisis of organization and resources.
On Monday, news came that Vingegaard was losing yet another cog in his machine, with his long-term coach Tim Heemskerk leaving Visma-Lease a Bike, citing cryptic reasons about no longer being able to apply creativity to his work, so it’s been a pretty eventful 2026 for Vingegaard so far, and he hasn’t even pinned on a number yet, whilst his main rivals are either winning every race they start, or enjoying straightforward training. This is the reality Visma now faces: not a season of redemption, but a season of survival.
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