Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe Names Battle-Hardened Squad to Shepherd Evenepoel Through Flanders Debut
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe has unveiled the seven men who will ride alongside Remco Evenepoel at Sunday's Tour of Flanders, and the message is unambiguous: the German outfit is putting every cobbled-classics specialist on its roster at the disposal of its new Belgian leader. With 35 combined Ronde starts between them, it is the most experienced Flanders squad the team has ever fielded — and a pointed signal that Evenepoel's shock debut is being treated as a genuine tilt at the win, not a development exercise.
At the head of the supporting cast is Gianni Vermeersch, the 33-year-old Belgian who has started the race seven times with a best finish of seventh in 2021. Vermeersch was also the anonymous figure spotted alongside Evenepoel in black, unbranded kit on the Oude Kwaremont and Paterberg last December, a secret recon that has since entered spring-classics folklore. His role on Sunday will be a classic sherpa brief: shepherd Evenepoel through the first 150 kilometres, shield him from splits in the crosswinds towards Oudenaarde, and empty himself on the final run into the Koppenberg.
Flanking Vermeersch are cobbled stalwarts Nils Politt, Danny van Poppel and Jordi Meeus, none of whom are pure climbers but all of whom can deliver a leader to the foot of the hellingen in a strong position. Politt in particular — a former Paris-Roubaix podium finisher — gives the team the kind of engine that can chase down dangerous early moves without compromising Evenepoel's effort later. Van Poppel and Meeus provide positional insurance in the nervy opening hour when the peloton hits the first cobbled sectors.
Rounding out the lineup are Marco Haller, Florian Lipowitz and Giovanni Aleotti, a mix of Austrian cobbled experience, German classics promise and Italian diesel. It is not a squad built to put riders up the road — Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe clearly accepts that Evenepoel will need to win the race on his own legs from the second ascent of the Kwaremont — but it is a squad built to ensure their man arrives at that crucial moment in the front group, fresh, fed and unruffled.
"We have known since December that this was the goal, so we have been able to plan everything around Remco with total clarity," sports director Rolf Aldag told WielerFlits on Saturday morning. "The riders we have selected are not here to animate the race. They are here to protect Remco until the decisive moment and then let him do what only Remco can do. He is the most complete rider in the peloton outside of Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel, and we believe he can handle the cobbles."
The lineup also reflects how deeply Evenepoel's arrival has reshaped Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's classics identity. A team that spent the 2025 spring pouring resources into Primož Roglič's stage-race programme has, in the space of four months, reorganised itself around a Belgian Monument hunter. It is a remarkable pivot — and the fact that they kept the entire plan secret for more than 100 days, culminating in an April Fools-day announcement nobody initially believed, has only heightened the sense that this squad arrives in Bruges with something genuinely audacious in mind.
Whether Evenepoel can actually win the Tour of Flanders on debut remains a question no rider since Fabian Cancellara has answered affirmatively, and the Belgian himself has been careful this week to temper expectations. But if the quality of the riders surrounding him is a reliable proxy for ambition, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe is not in Flanders to learn. They are in Flanders to win.