2025 season review | Team Visma | Lease a Bike: Yates and Vingegaard win Giro and Vuelta, but were the team's goals reached?

Team Visma | Lease a Bike entered 2025 as one of the forces in the peloton, and the year unfolded as further proof that their winning habits had not slipped. The squad lined up with a roster that blended star power with depth, built around Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert. Expectations were high from the outset, and the team’s early performances only raised them further. The ultimate goal? Catch UAE Team Emirates – XRG and Tadej Pogacar, and reclaim the yellow jersey for Jonas Vingegaard. By the time the final race of the season wrapped, Visma had delivered one of the most complete campaigns in modern men’s road cycling, but they did miss out on their ultimate goal.

The Dutch organization, long known as Jumbo-Visma, has spent the 2020s creating a structure capable of winning in every terrain. Vingegaard remained the backbone of the team’s stage-race ambitions, arriving as a two-time Tour de France champion and leaving the year with a third Grand Tour title added to his record. His Vuelta triumph solidified him as one of the era’s defining riders, and he enjoyed another battle with Tadej Pogacar at the Tour de France.

Van Aert, meanwhile, recovered from a difficult start to the year to pick up 2 massive wins, fight for classic victories, and provided the versatility that has made him indispensable to Visma’s approach. Alongside them, riders such as Sepp Kuss, Matteo Jorgenson, and Simon Yates filled every tactical need, giving the team the luxury of multiple options in every major race.

From the start of the season it was clear the numbers were still super strong. Visma collected 40 victories, an increase on the 32 they posted the previous year. The team finished second in the UCI world ranks, behind only UAE Team Emirates - XRG. In a sport where depth matters as much as star riders, Visma’s spread of wins across Grand Tours, classics, and World Tour stage races demonstrated how well-balanced their program remained even amid rising competition from the likes of Lidl-Trek.

The early months of the season revealed a curious contrast. Visma rode with conviction through every major classic but could not convert those performances into the one-day wins they sought. Milano-Sanremo brought the first sign of this near-miss pattern. Mathieu van der Poel won, with Tadej Pogacar and Filippo Ganna just behind him, and Visma were almost completely absent from the sharp end. A few days later at Dwars door Vlaanderen, Neilson Powless stunned the field with a sharp late move, leaving Van Aert in second and teammates Tiesj Benoot and Matteo Jorgenson in third and fourth.

Tour of Flanders followed the same script. Pogacar surged on the Oude Kwaremont, establishing the winning selection, and Van Aert finished just outside the podium again in fourth. Benoot’s sixth place underlined the squad’s depth, but the top step was once again beyond reach. Paris–Roubaix, a race that has broken and made careers, brought yet more heartbreak. Van der Poel took his third straight victory in the Roubaix velodrome as Van Aert recovered from being dropped early on to reach the front again, only to finish fourth. Mads Pedersen denied him the final podium place in a tight sprint that summed up the frustrations of Visma’s classics spring.

Even the Ardennes races, where Visma often finds late-spring success, followed the theme. At Amstel Gold Race, Mattias Skjelmose edged Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel, while Van Aert once more finished fourth and Benoot eighth. At De Brabantse Pijl, Van Aert’s wait for victory went on further, as we stunned by Remco Evenepoel in a two man sprint.

The pattern was clear: Visma were always present, often in control, and rarely outnumbered. They executed intelligent tactics, put riders in the right moves, and maintained consistent pressure. Yet the knockout blow never landed. For a team accustomed to turning opportunities into silverware, a spring without a high-profile victory felt below their usual standards.

The Grand Tours defined Visma’s year, and they delivered across all three. The Giro d’Italia served as a proving ground rather than a priority, yet it still brought one of the highlights of the year. Van Aert’s solo on Stage 9 into Siena, where he finally shook off Isaac del Toro to pick up his first win of 2025, stood out as one of the Giro’s memorable moments.

But the real drama unfolded, somewhat out of nowhere, on the final mountain stage. And it came from one of the ultimate acts of redemption for Britain’s Simon Yates.

Trailing the leader by 1 minute 21 seconds before the penultimate stage, he unleashed a bold attack on the climb of the Colle delle Finestre, the very slope where he cracked in 2018, and stormed away to gain a commanding 3 minutes 56 seconds on his rivals, seizing the maglia rosa for good.

His victory felt shocking because it upended the race in its final moments and came against strong GC threats, and many had counted him out of the race for pink. The day belonged not only to Yates: Van Aert put in what the team called a “career-best performance,” riding wildly hard in the valleys and on the descent to help funnel Yates into position for his decisive move, a vivid demonstration of teamwork and selfless support.

The Tour de France returned Vingegaard to the centre of attention. Visma entered the Tour with dual aims: defend Vingegaard’s GC hopes against a strong field led by Pogacar, and take chances for stage wins. Simon Yates delivered the first of those wins on Bastille Day, launching a long-range move that stuck. That victory set the tone for a resilient Tour in which Vingegaard battled Pogacar through the high mountains, but the Dane ultimately came up short against his old rival.

Vingegaard finished second overall, and although he put in a strong display, he was over 4 minutes behind Pogacar. It now remains to be seen how he can try and close that gap as we head into 2026.

Van Aert added the finishing flourish on the Champs-Élysées, winning the final stage in empathic style where he managed to drop Tadej Pogacar on the Montmatre climb. It was the Belgian’s first win at the Tour since 2022, and ensured he picked up two super grand tour stage wins in 2025.

If the Tour brought drama, the Vuelta a España brought certainty. From Stage 2 onward, Vingegaard looked impossible to dislodge. He won the early mountain stages, controlled the race with ease, and struck decisively on Stage 20 at the summit finish on Bola del Mundo just when it looked like Joao Almeida could be a threat. That attack sealed his third stage victory of the race and effectively locked down the overall win. He finished one minute and sixteen seconds ahead of his nearest rival, claiming his first Vuelta title.

The supporting cast excelled as well. Kuss, already a Grand Tour winner in 2023, rode patiently in the mountains and finished seventh. Jorgenson, given freedom to attack, secured tenth overall. Visma placed three riders inside the top ten, a rare feat that summarised the depth they brought to Spain. Across the three Grand Tours the team claimed the Giro overall, a Tour de France podium, and the Vuelta overall, and several memorable stage wins.

But, the yellow jersey was missing…

As the season ended, Visma turned to 2026 with a transfer strategy rooted more in refinement than overhaul. The confirmed arrivals included Bruno Armirail, Owain Doull, and younger talents such as Timo Kielich, Tim Rex, Pietro Mattio, Davide Piganzoli, Filippo Fiorelli. Manager Grischa Niermann described the new recruits as riders “with hunger” who fit the team’s race identity.

Departures hit closer to the core of the team. Benoot, one of their most reliable classics riders, moved to Decathlon–CMA CGM. Sprinter Olav Kooij joined him there, a loss that weakens Visma’s pure sprint resources. The surprise exit of Cian Uijtdebroeks to Movistar carries longer-term implications, given his projected future as a GC leader.

Other departures, Attila Valter, Dylan van Baarle, and Thomas Gloag, remove experience and depth. Even so, Visma’s transfer activity suggested confidence in their development pipeline and their ability to replace specialists through structured growth rather than high-cost acquisitions.

Visma’s 2025 campaign earns a firm 8.5/10. They fell short of only two targets: a Tour de France victory and a spring monument. Yet those near-misses were overshadowed by what they did achieve. Yates incredible Giro redemption, Vingegaard’s Vuelta win arrived with authority, Van Aert added stage wins and major placings, and the team reached 40 victories across the calendar while finishing second in the world rankings.

Just as important, the structure of the team remained intact, the internal roles continued to work, and their results in the Giro, Tour, and Vuelta showed that their stage-race dominance remains undiminished.

But…

The yellow jersey appears further out of reach than it did at the start of the year. Vingegaard had a full training programme for the Tour this year, and could do nothing to make Pogacar uncomfortable. The question is how can they put the Slovenian and UAE under pressure in 2026?

When Visma were good in 2025, they were devastating. Watching Simon Yates turn the Giro on its head, or seeing Wout van Aert finally land the kind of statement wins he’d been chasing all spring, felt like the team at their irresistible best. And Vingegaard at the Vuelta was back to being the rider who can suffocate a Grand Tour from start to finish.

Those highs were unforgettable, the sort of moments that remind you why Visma remain one of the great modern teams. But even with all that, I just don’t see a clear path for Vingegaard to unseat Pogacar at the Tour. The gap didn’t close in 2025, if anything, it widened, and I’m not sure what cards Visma have left to play next July.

I'm reluctant to give Visma a 10, because the expectations they set for themselves are so high. Most teams it would, but I give them a 9. That Tour de France win would change everything, but the truth is you can't blame Jonas Vingegaard for not being able to beat Tadej Pogacar. At the end of the day, for several years now, he is the only rider that is preventing the Slovenian from going on a decade-long utter domination of the race without a single competitor.

There's a lot to talk really... Transfer-wise, the team does lose. Olav Kooij and Tiesj Benoot are meaningful losses, and even in riders like Uijtdebroeks, Gloag and van Baarle there is that loss of the 'middle of the block'. It feels like the team doesn't have the money it would hope for, I think its signings have potential, but they certainly aren't at the level of other top teams such as Lidl-Trek or Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe who are throwing in millions a year on signing new established leaders and stars. 

2025, maybe rider by rider. Wout van Aert, he did his job. In an era of Pogacar and van der Poel, and now Mads Pedersen too, van Aert is battling three separate generational riders and finishing fourth at both Flanders and Roubaix is realistically the best he could do. He timed his form peak perfectly think, but the selfish decision to try and win Dwars door Vlaanderen for his confidence was a tough hit and a very wrong decision by him and the team. Otherwise he took huge and popular wins at the Giro and Tour, helped sprinters such as Kooij and Brennan to achieve their own victories; was absolutely key to Yates' Giro win and also supported Vingegaard well at the Tour... He did what was expected of him.

Matteo Jorgenson won Paris-Nice, served a perfect domestique role at Dauphiné, Tour and Vuelta for Jonas Vingegaard. He is in the right place and fits perfectly in the team. Matthew Brennan is the team's new jewel, product of Visma's development, and its future great big bet away from the mountains. The team seem to be developing him well.

Simon Yates winning the Giro and then also taking a stage victory at the Tour de France; as well as the extremely successful signing of Victor Campenaerts who is now another one of Jonas Vingegaard's right-hand men proves that the team has gotten the Grand Tour preparations dialed to perfection. They can do performance like almost no other team, and this keeps them up there, bringing the best out of many of their riders. Sepp Kuss was also back to his best when it really mattered, doing a brilliant Tour-Vuelta double, helping Vingegaard in critical moments.

Vingegaard, his spring was again finished with a brutal crash. But he once again reached his very best level at the Tour de France. Second behind Pogacar is essentially the best most could hope for, he lacked the win but did his job. He won the Vuelta a España, a smart decision by the team, even though he was not at his best. If Visma is smart, they don't think twice before sending him to the Giro next spring. 40 wins at the end of the year is also quite respectable, specially as the team had the least race days out of any World Tour team this year.