TOUR·KINETIC

Visma | Lease a Bike · staff profile
CEO / general manager
Richard Plugge

The culture-builder behind Visma's transformation from troubled Dutch team to the sport's most systematic Grand Tour machine.

Richard Plugge paper-collage staff portrait

Richard Plugge took over the Dutch team after the Rabobank era and helped rebuild it into Jumbo-Visma, then Team Visma | Lease a Bike. The transformation was not just a sponsor change; it was a cultural rebuild around nutrition, altitude, equipment, talent development, and a tightly integrated performance staff.

Visma's peak seasons made the team the clearest rival to UAE: Jonas Vingegaard's Tour wins, Primoz Roglic's Grand Tour run, Wout van Aert's versatility, and a reputation for tactical depth. Plugge became a public advocate for teams thinking more like modern sports franchises and less like sponsor-dependent touring circuses.

The 2026 Tour again centres on Vingegaard versus Pogacar, but Visma arrives with staff transition in the background. Plugge's importance is in keeping the system stable while Marc Reef steps forward and Grischa Niermann moves out of the visible head-of-racing role.

Why it mattersVisma's biggest weapon is not one rider; it is an organisation that keeps finding small edges.

Sources

The squad

Richard Plugge is part of the Visma | Lease a Bike story at the 2026 Tour — see the full team page.

Portrait: AI paper-collage render (gpt-image-2) after a public reference image — source: en.wikipedia.org, author/source: d1lk6qpkbduawh.cloudfront.net, license/status: reference source; see source. A fan project — not affiliated with the Tour de France or A.S.O.