With a cash injection from Red Bull and the signing of Primož Roglič, Bora-Hansgrohe’s team manager Ralph Denk is in confident mood. He tells Cyclist about the rising costs of running a team, the secrets of leadership and the Sagan effect
Words James Witts Photography Tornanti.cc
R alph Denk leans back in his office chair at Bora-Hansgrohe’s headquarters in south Germany. Around him is a collection of Specialized bikes once used by his team.
‘I’ve collected one of these each year since forming the road team in 2007. That’s a long time leading a squad at this level but I’m super-motivated,’ he says. ‘Cycling – it’s 24/7. I’m 50 years old now but I’m driven by pushing things forward, by winning the Tour de France with Primož Roglič and Red Bull. Well, let’s see how far we can go.’
We’re going to need a bigger budget
Denk is founder and team manager of Germany’s only WorldTour team and, as the years have rolled by, has increasingly become the money man, charged with attracting much-needed sponsorship in a professional sport that lives and dies by sponsorship money.
‘Over 95% of our income comes from sponsors,’ Denk says. ‘The rest is participation fees and some merchandising, but that’s not a lot. Simply, you need ever greater budgets to compete. If you look back to strong German teams like Gerolsteiner and Team Milram, they were operating on €7 to €8 million a year. Now, with the likes of Ineos and Middle Eastern money entering the sport, you need a minimum of €20 million, but better €25, €30, €35, €40…’
The last time Cyclist spoke to Denk was at the 2018 Tour de France where he lamented cycling’s broken business model of short-term sponsorships, saying, ‘If I have a ten-year project, I can invest more into that. It’s partly why Team Sky have been so successful.’ Six years later, Denk’s dreams look set to become reality with the news that he has been in negotiations with energy drink giant Red Bull about something bigger than sponsorship: acquisition.
‘We’d been in talks since the autumn and agreed we were on the same page and had the same philosophy for a cool new project,’ Denk says. ‘We asked for government authorisation to approve the “liaison” between Bora-Hansgrohe and Red Bull and they gave us the green light at the start of the year. Red Bull now owns 51% of the team.’
More precisely, Red Bull has a 51% stake in RD Pro Cycling GmbH & Co KG and RD Beteiligungs GmbH, the two companies that own the Bora-Hansgrohe team,
