RED BULL - BORA - HANSGROHE

The pro cycling peloton is becoming a who's who of the most popular international brands. Following in the slipstream of Lidl and Decathlon, Red Bull has taken over Bora–Hansgrohe, the team that, under the energetic management of Ralph Denk, turned around the fortunes of German cycling after it had fallen to its nadir a decade and a half ago. Under its original avatar as NetApp–Endura, his small outfit played its role as a wild-card team with gusto in its first Tour de France in 2014, when Jan Bárta sent alarm bells ringing through the peloton in the streets of London. The Czech rider also finished the race on a high note with third place in the time trial between Bergerac and Périgueux.

The team rallied around its leader, fellow Czech Leopold König, an outstanding climber who had already won a stage in the 2013 Vuelta a España and wrapped up his first Tour de France in seventh place. Wild cards helped the squad to grow, recruit sponsors such as Bora, Hansgrohe and Specialized, and snap up two stars from the defunct Tinkoff squad, Peter Sagan and Rafał Majka. In 2017, the three-time world champion's first Tour de France with his new team was cut short when race officials booted him out of the race the day after his stage win in Longwy. Even though that marked the end of his triumphant streak in green, the Slovak —who has since retired from the WorldTour peloton— rebounded with another batch of stage wins and a brief spell in yellow in 2018, bringing his total in the points classification to six victories that same year and setting an absolute record of seven in 2019.

Sagan went through two lean seasons in the Tour de France. He missed out on a stage win and the green jersey in both 2020 (when Sam Bennett became the first challenger to beat him) and 2021 (when he crashed out of the race). In the end, Bora–Hansgrohe chose not to extend his contract, not least because of the depth of its roster, with the Germans, Austrians and others: Maximilian Schachmann, the winner of the 2020 and 2021 Paris–Nice, Emanuel Buchmann, who finished fourth in the 2019 Tour de France, Lennard Kämna, who took an emotional victory in Villard-de-Lands in 2020, Nils Politt and Patrick Konrad, who picked up solo stage wins in 2021, and Wilco Kelderman, who came in fifth overall that same year. Twelve months later, Aleksandr Vlasov posted the same result in Paris. The 2022 Giro champion, the Aussie Jai Hindley, put in a barnstorming performance in 2023 to clinch the stage to Laruns and seize the yellow jersey for a day before going on to finish seventh overall. Jordi Meeus, who had prevailed over Sam Bennett in the fight for the sprinter's slot on the German outfit's line-up, struck like a bolt out of the blue to claim victory on the Champs-Élysées, the team's crowning achievement in that Tour de France. The structure has managed to move on from Peter Sagan and earned its wings in anticipation of joining forces with the giant Red Bull. Even more importantly, it made a splash on the transfer market through its signing of Primož Roglič. The four-time Grand Tour winner is missing just one piece of the collection and is one of the hot favourites for the top spot after taking the Critérium du Dauphiné.