Sam Bennett will be managed by new directeurs when he leads Bora-hansgrohe next year during his second stint at the team. The German team has just unveiled three new directeurs, who join earlier new signing Ralf Aldag on the management side of the squad.
Bernie Eisel, Enrico Gasparotto and Torsten Schmidt have all been confirmed for the DS line-up at the WorldTour team. Aldag's move to the squad - in a senior management rater than DS role - had already been confirmed last month.
Eisel is Mark Cavendish's former lead-out man from both HTC Highroad and Dimension Data and has been working as journalist since retiring in 2019. The Austrian won Gent Wevelgem during his career.
Gasparotto won Amstel Gold twice in his career and retired last year. From Switzerland, he gained some DS experience recently with Nippo-Provence. Former German pro Schmidt spent much of his career with the Gerolsteiner team and has since worked with a variety of teams including Katusha.
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The four new management figures come into the set-up at a time of great change for the WorldTour team. Enrico Poitschke has been replaced by Aldag after over a decade. He was with the team from the time it was a Continental outfit and was among its senior staff during the six years Bennett spent there.
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Aside from the management changes, Peter Sagan and his rider and staff entourage have all departed while German sprinter Pascal Ackermann has also left.
The departures of Sagan and Ackermann effectively cleared the way for Bennett's return as the team had persisted with selecting them for Grand Tours ahead of Bennett even though the Irishman was in the ascendency.
As well as Bennett being signed as a lead rider, Bora-hansgrohe is bringing in lead-out men Ryan Mullen, Danny van Poppel and Shane Archbald for Bennett. The team also signed British sprinter Matt Walls last year while riders like Belgian teenager Cian Uijtdebroecks (18) as well as Aleksandr Vlasov, Sergio Higuita and Jai Hindley.
Bennett rode for Bora-hansgrohe, in its various guises, from the start of 2014 until the end of the 2019 season, when he left after a protracted process as the team tried to keep him as its rider.
The 31-year-old Irishman signed with Deceuninck-QuickStep and enjoyed a dream season last year with two Tour de France stage wins and the green jersey as well as claiming five other victories. This year started very well for Bennett, with seven wins to mid May.
However, he then sustained a knee injury which ruined the remainder of his campaign. Bennett's team manager, Patrick Lefevere, then engaged in a series of appalling verbal attacks of Bennett, for which he was criticised in the media.
