At the heart of the soap opera that has shaken up the world of cycling in recent weeks, Belgian hopeful Cian Uijtdebroeks will join the Visma-Lease a Bike team (formerly Jumbo-Visma) from 2024, his team said on Thursday. former team, Bora-Hansgrohe. “Bora-Hansgrohe, Cian Uijtdebroeks and Jumbo-Visma today (Thursday) concluded a tripartite agreement. The UCI (International Cycling Union, Editor’s note) has approved this agreement,” the German team announced in a press release.
The affair shook the cycling world at the beginning of December, when the team of Jonas Vingegaard and Wout Van Aert announced the transfer of Uijtdebroeks for four years, immediately attracting a denial from Bora. “Cian is and will remain a Bora-Hansgrohe rider, including during the upcoming 2024 season,” the team said at the time. But the situation has since calmed down, explained the manager of the German team, Ralph Denk, on Thursday.
“I was surprised to have been approached at such short notice (…) but everyone knows that I am open to discussions and not the type to get in the way of a transfer if the conditions are good and if the things are done according to the rules,” he declared in a press release from the German team, which did not specify the financial conditions of the arrangement reached. Aged 20, Uijtdebroeks is considered a general classification rider, capable of shining in stage races. In 2022 he won the Tour de l’Avenir, an event reserved for under-23s, and, for his first participation in a grand tour among the pros, took eighth place in the Vuelta this year.
The former Jumbo-Visma, renamed Visma-Lease a Bike during the off-season, crushed the competition on the three grand tours in 2023, winning the Giro with Primoz Roglic, retaining the Tour de France with Vingegaard and signing an unprecedented hat-trick in the Vuelta, Kuss winning in front of his two leaders. But it has since lost Roglic: after eight seasons spent in its ranks, the Slovenian, who is 34 years old, joined Bora-Hansgrohe. Uijtdebroeks could, in time, become the Slovenian’s successor in the yellow-clad Dutch team.
