{"id":615925,"date":"2026-06-01T21:44:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T21:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/615925\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T21:44:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T21:44:14","slug":"visma-lease-a-bike-head-of-racing-grischa-niermann-set-to-leave-team-for-lidl-trek-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/615925\/","title":{"rendered":"Visma-Lease a Bike head of racing Grischa Niermann set to leave team for Lidl-Trek \u2013 reports"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a shock managerial change, Visma-Lease a Bike<\/a>‘s head of racing, Grischa Niermann, is reportedly set to depart the Dutch team and join Lidl-Trek, where he would replace longstanding general manager, Luca Guercilena. This is according to news broken on Monday evening by Daniel Benson’s Substack<\/a>, Dutch publication Wielerflits<\/a> and Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It would mark a significant shake-up for two of cycling’s big-budget super teams, with Niermann having only been in his managerial position at Visma since September 30 2024, when Grand Tour mastermind Merijn Zeeman left the team for a job in football<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Niermann has overseen a very successful stint, having worked as head coach at Visma for several years prior, and as a directeur sportif for the team since 2017. The German retired as a pro rider in 2012 after 15 years with Rabobank, then worked for their women’s team and development squad, before joining what was LottoNL Jumbo at the time.<\/p>\n

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Having just steered Visma to their second Giro d’Italia title in two years with Jonas Vingegaard<\/a>, Wielerflits reported that DS Marc Reef is expected to step up into Niermann’s management role. The Dutchman has been part of the performance<\/a> team since 2022, after making his way as a DS on a long stint at DSM (now Picnic PostNL).<\/p>\n

Guercilena’s Lidl-Trek departure would mark the end of an era for the Italian, who oversaw much of Trek’s development to now being one of the top teams in the sport, as a men’s squad, women’s squad, and as a development programme. He joined the team in 2011 as a DS when it was formed as Leopard Trek.<\/p>\n

Lidl-Trek switched from being a US-licensed team to riding under a German flag for 2026, and would have one of the most experienced operators in the WorldTour steering the ship with Niermann, who is a proven Grand Tour expert. Aside from his successes with the likes of Wout van Aert<\/a> in the Classics, the German contributed heavily to 10 Grand Tour wins during his time with Visma for Vingegaard, Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d, Simon Yates, and Sepp Kuss.<\/p>\n

They have gone through several management changes already in the past 18 months, with the supermarket chain Lidl first taking a majority ownership stake last July<\/a>. After this, Andy Schleck was appointed as Deputy General Manager in December, before brother Fr\u00e4nk Schleck<\/a> took over from Mick Rogers as the director of the women’s team, and Bernie Eisel <\/a>moved up from sports director to head of racing in April.<\/p>\n

Accoriding to Daniel Benson’s report, Andy Schleck would become CEO of Lidl-Trek amid the changes, but their are various different reports about the exact nature of the shake-ups at both teams, with no changes officially announced yet.<\/p>\n

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Cyclingnews contacted both Visma-Lease a Bike and Lidl-Trek for reaction, but both teams declined to comment on speculation at the time of writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a shock managerial change, Visma-Lease a Bike‘s head of racing, Grischa Niermann, is reportedly set to depart…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-615925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}