Rabobank is throwing itself again into skilled biking sponsorship after being absent for practically a decade, with Visma-Lease a Bike confirming on Thursday that the Dutch-based financial institution would be part of forces with the squad after signing a three-and-a-half-year deal.
Wielerflits flagged that the re-entry into the realm of males’s and girls’s skilled biking was within the wings on Wednesday for the monetary establishment which has a presence throughout 35 international locations and in 2024 reported a internet revenue of €5,163 billion.
“With the addition of Group Visma-Lease a Bike to our sports activities partnerships, we’re returning to our previous love: biking,” Stefaan Decraene, Chairman of the Managing Board of Rabobank, mentioned in a media assertion. “Because the jersey sponsor of each the lads’s and girls’s groups, in addition to the Improvement Group, we sit up for supporting the following era of biking expertise collectively.”
Rabobank was beforehand a title sponsor of a top-level males’s skilled biking staff for 17 years, from 1996 to 2012. It pulled the pin on its sponsorship of the lads’s squad following a report from america Anti-Doping Company. On the time Bert Bruggink, a member of the organisation’s Managing Board mentioned “We’re not satisfied that the worldwide skilled world of biking could make this a clear and honest sport. We’re not assured that it will change for the higher within the foreseeable future.”
Regardless of the preliminary announcement in 2012 additionally foreshadowing a withdrawal from the ladies’s staff, which it had simply began sponsoring that 12 months, Rabobank ended up remaining with the staff by means of to the tip of 2016. The squad was one of many strongest forces in ladies’s biking all through that interval, topping the UCI rankings for 3 of its 5 seasons underneath the Rabobank title.
The groups had been dwelling to some key names within the sport, with riders who rode within the Rabobank jersey on the ladies’s squad throughout that interval together with Marianne Vos, Anna van der Breggen, Annemiek van Vleuten, Kasia Niewiadoma and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot whereas the lads’s staff included Robbie McEwen, Johan Bruyneel, Óscar Freire and in addition delivered riders like Michael Matthews and Wilco Kelderman their first WorldTour contracts.
Rabobank’s sponsorship re-entry which is able to see its title added to the jerseys of the lads’s, ladies’s and growth staff will start on July 1. The organisation can be becoming a member of forces with Visma-Lease a Bike within the Ready2Race program which goals to introduce youngsters to biking in an accessible method.
“Their determination to rejoin us as a accomplice is a good praise,” Richard Plugge, CEO of Visma-Lease a Bike mentioned in a press release. “It exhibits how a lot biking has developed in recent times and the way our staff has turn out to be synonymous with professionalism, integrity, and success.”
“By way of this partnership, we proceed constructing the way forward for the game and encourage the following era of biking abilities. We’re pleased with this collaboration and enthusiastic about what we will obtain collectively.”
