One of the most iconic cycling sponsors of yesteryear is reportedly getting back into the game in time for this year's Tour de France. Wielerflits reports that Rabobank, former title sponsor of the team now called Visma-Lease a Bike, will have a place on the team's jerseys starting in July, replacing BetCity in a spot on the sleeves as a Dutch law banning betting sponsors in sports goes into effect.
The news marks a surprise return for the Dutch bank, which decided to withdraw its name from the team after the 2012 season even as it continued paying the bills as contractually required for a full year, such was the company's desire to distance itself from cycling amid doping scandals. For that same company to be willing to make a return to the sport, then, hints that perhaps cycling has begun to shed some of the stigma that years of unchecked doping helped create.
Rabobank's cycling story goes all the way back to the 1990s, when the company first entered the sport. They would ultimately become a sponsorship force behind both men's and women's pro teams, races, and the Dutch cycling federation, and thus a major financial backer of cycling generally.
Back in 1996, Rabobank made its entry into cycling as the new title sponsor of Novell-Decca; those nostalgic for the '90s may remember the first of those two sponsors as the parent company of iconic word processing software WordPerfect. At the time, the squad included rising star Robbie McEwen, Monument winner Rolf Sørensen, Michael Boogerd, Erik Dekker, and Johan Bruyneel.
A new generation of Rabobank stars arrived in the 2000s, with Michael Rasmussen and Óscar Freire among them. Current Visma Head of Racing Grischa Niermann was also a member of the squad throughout the period.
Rasmussen took the team to the brink of its first Tour de France victory in 2007, but even as he was in the yellow jersey partway through the race, news emerged that he had been suspended from the Danish national team over whereabouts violations and missed doping controls. He was subsequently fired by the Rabobank team – while in the race lead – and removed from the race shortly after winning stage 16. His victory celebration at the finish line on the Col d'Aubisque would be his last moment racing in Rabobank kit.
The following July, he received a two-year ban backdated to his Tour dismissal.
That would not be the last time that a doping scandal would bring Rabobank negative headlines, although before the other shoe truly dropped, Denis Menchov did go on to win the 2009 Giro d'Italia for the team. Meanwhile, in 2012, Rabobank began to sponsor a women's team headlined by superstar Marianne Vos, who enjoyed a banner year, winning Olympic and World Championship titles.
It was also in 2012, however, that ongoing anti-doping investigations produced bombshell results that impacted the entire sport. Lance Armstrong was banned for life by USADA for a series of offenses detailed in the agency's Reasoned Decision, and his former teammate Levi Leipheimer, who rode for Rabobank from 2002 to 2004, told investigators that he had taken EPO during his time with the Rabobank squad with the help of the team doctor. He also said that others in the team had doped too.
That same year, the Rabobank team suspended Carlos Barredo after anti-doping rule violations, and the very next day, the title sponsor made the shock announcement that it would stop sponsoring the team at the end of the year, although it continued to pay for the team through the following season as contractually obligated.
"We are no longer convinced that the international professional world of cycling can make this a clean and fair sport," said Bert Bruggink, a member of the board of governors, at the time. "We are not confident that this will change for the better in the foreseeable future."
It was hard to blame the bank for its desire to distance itself from the sport, as several Rabobank riders would ultimately be implicated in various investigations into doping that had occurred in the 2000s. Menchov, who had narrowly avoided disaster in the final time trial of the 2009 Giro by quickly remounting after a crash, was unable to narrowly avoid the consequences of his long history of doping. In 2014, he was stripped of Tour de France results from 2009 through 2012 a received a ban.
Team management also underwent an overhaul, with head director Erik Breukink and several others swept out after 2012 in favor of new general manager Richard Plugge, who has been in the role since.
Rabobank continued to sponsor the RaboLiv women's team for a few more seasons, but the bank called time on that as well in 2016. Since then, after relying on Rabobank's support for so long, the Dutch cycling scene has had to look elsewhere.
For the first part of the 2013 season after Rabobank's withdrawal, the men's team formerly known as Rabobank raced as "Blanco," a nod to the the blank space where a title sponsor would normally be. Belkin took over as title sponsor midway through the year. When Belkin left at the end of 2014, the squad became LottoNL-Jumbo, adopting the black and yellow that remain the team's colors a decade later in the Visma-Lease a Bike era.
Over the course of that lengthy period, the team gradually built itself into one cycling's premier organizations under new boss Plugge. The men's squad has won two multiple Tours de France – and Visma riders won all three Grand Tours in 2023 – and the organization has run a women's squad since 2021, with the aforementioned Vos as its marquee rider.
Although Visma has not been entirely free of anti-doping cases, with Michael Hessmann receiving a suspension in 2023 that German anti-doping authorities acknowledged could have been a contaminated supplement, there has certainly been less scandal around the team, and cycling in general, than there was in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Indeed, the fact that Rabobank is set to return to the team's kit after so much time may be a telling sign of the times for a company that had been so turned off by its experience is dipping its toes back into the waters of sponsorship. What's more, Wielerflits reports that Rabobank's foray back into cycling via a spot on Visma-Lease a Bike's sleeves is "only the beginning."
It remains to be seen just what Rabobank has planned for future, but any involvement from an organization with such a strong place in cycling's history feels like boon for Visma. As the Ineos Grenadiers – who are apparently looking for new sponsorship partners after years of being the superteam in the pro peloton – can attest, money is always top of mind for bike racing teams regardless of how dominant they are or were. After all, even at the height of Visma's own success, they had to find a replacement for former title sponsor Jumbo, with Lease a Bike taking over in 2024.
At the very least, Rabobank's return to the peloton in any capacity is a testament to the reversal of fortunes for the team they left in 2012, which has remade itself in a sufficiently attractive fashion to draw a major company back to cycling.
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